A Poem by Rob A. Mackenzie

Father Ted

I heard God was a fan of Father Ted, according to the Blue Order
of Revisionist Arcanity. Laughter shook heaven like a sauce bottle
when Bishop Brennan was kicked in the arse, when the priests
laid siege to the biggest lingerie department in Ireland, when
Mrs Doyle poured out the Unholy Spirit from a sacrificial teapot.

Ted’s theology of God was a bovine discipline: the plastic cows
on the desk were small, the cows in the fields were far away.
He set Father Dougal the ultimate dialectical conundrum.
Was God small or far away? Did God’s essential mystery
meet its measure in dimension or distance? “That would be

an ecumenical matter,” I’d suggest, followed by “Drink! Feck!
Girls! Down with this sort of thing!” Please try to understand
I’m a serial absconder from solemn business. I’ve a tendency
to under-egg an omelette, to elucidate the void as if it didn’t
exist, to walk the via negativa with SMART goals in my head.

Rob A. Mackenzie is a Glaswegian poet, editor and reviewer, who lives in Leith. His three full poetry collections are The Opposite of Cabbage (2009), The Good News (2013) and The Book of Revelation (2020), all published by Salt. He has also had poems and articles published in many magazines and anthologies. He is reviews editor for Magma Poetry magazine and runs literary publisher, Blue Diode Press.