I’ve been unsettled by the poem Invictus ever since I had to memorize it in High School.  It is lauded and celebrated by so many as an example of the resolve of will required to persist in this harsh world.  But I actually believe it is an arrogant poem.  So, randomly, and recently, I wrote a parody version of it that I’d like to call Deus.

Out from the night that once was me,
Black as a pit from pole to pole,
I thank the Everlasting God,
For my redeeméd soul.

In the kind crib of circumstance
I often wince and cry aloud.
Beneath the rod of providence,
My head is humbled but now bowed.

Beyond this place of holy tears
There is the Light without a shade.
There the infinite blissful Years,
Shall find me wholly unafraid.

It matters much how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
But God is the master of my fate:
Christ is the captain of my soul.