It’s confusing
Waking up in the dark
Before exercise time
Thinking of a Sunday E-mail
That inferred
I was not righteous.

When is it going to end?

It started when I was
Baptized into Catholicism—
Circumcised before I could talk
Babble or walk;
Taught to confess
Before five
While eating
Fish on Fridays.

We celebrated Christmas
With colored lights draped
On dead evergreens
Cut down in their youth,
Destined to become sawdust
Dumped in a landfill
Serving no useful purpose.

At Easter,
We hunted
Hard boiled eggs among the weeds
Eating milk chocolate bunnies
Resulting in sugar rushes
And higher numbers
For obesity and diabetes
Giving the five o’clock
News something to talk about.

I was twelve when
Mother’s search for salvation
Skipped the Mormons and
Switched to a Kingdom Hall.

Everything we did
Seemed to be a sin
Followed by
Promises of salvation
That changed my
Growing up,
Childhood world
When a Jehovah Witness
Apocalypse arrived
Where Easter eggs and dead trees
Became the compost of history
And birthdays were forgotten.

A Childhood friend,
Now sixty-three like me,
Recently became an Evangelical
Born again Christian.
He’s righteous.
I’m not.
His voice shouts damnation
Through the World-Wide-Web
Warning of Hell.

I’m right back where I started;
However,
This time I don’t have to
Kneel and say a hundred Hail Mary’s
To have weekly
Sins without end forgiven.

Instead, scripture is the road map
And I’m to find
A nondenominational church
Where I tithe
Because it is the proper
Thing to do
To avoid what the next life might bring
While Christians
Through the centuries
Wage wars around the world
Raining death on third world villages
Filled with heathens
Saving the survivors
For someone that
Died on a cross two thousand years ago
Saying, “Father, forgive them.
They don’t know what they are doing.”
___________________________________

Discover the historical fiction novel, My Splendid Concubine, by Lloyd Lofthouse, (click here) at this AuthorsDen page.

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