I had every intention of titling this month’s poems in alphabetical order, but best laid plans, eh? I started off thinking about “beauty.” Good “B” word, right? And then one of my grandfather’s aphorisms sprang to mind: “Pretty is as pretty does.” This poem sprang from that and a conversation about the hypocrisy of certain “good Christians” and politicians and how there’s a psychological term for their particular, self-loathing brand of judgmental hypocrisy. “Pretty” isn’t it. Nor is “beauty.” But with any luck, you’ll follow the mental processes to see how we got here from there.<\/p>\n
R<\/strong>ighteous in hypocrisy, they think to\r\ne<\/strong>xculpate themselves, \r\na<\/strong>ccusing others of their flaws, defining\r\nc<\/strong>rimes where none exist\r\nt<\/strong>rying to deflect self-loathing\r\ni<\/strong>mages held dear, judging, demonizing\r\no<\/strong>thers in their zeal, their quest: to\r\nn<\/strong>ullify the hatred turned within.\r\n\u200b\r\nF<\/strong>athers, mothers - stand\r\no<\/strong>utside the need to make a tiny\r\nr<\/strong>eplica, to form of nascent clay a \r\nm<\/strong>an or woman in your image. Only God\u2019s\r\na<\/strong>llowed that power \u2014\r\nt<\/strong>hat perfection you\u2019ve dared judge \r\ni<\/strong>mmoral, turned a well-honed weapon\r\no<\/strong>n itself. Devoid of love, the world can\r\nn<\/strong>ever make itself anew.<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An acrostic born of beauty, hypocrisy, and faith. And a little glimpse into the process that birthed the poem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":137990339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_has_post_settings":[],"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,7],"tags":[2741],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-137990337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","category-writing","tag-a2z2025"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-25 16:13:20","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137990337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137990337"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137990337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137990340,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137990337\/revisions\/137990340"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137990339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137990337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137990337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137990337"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=137990337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}