It's the path to righteousness
Put a five dollar bill in the plate
Then be as iniquitous as you like
And your life will turn out great.
Put in a buck or two, maybe more
It's a method known since 1147
In an urchin's hand and you score.
Anyone can buy their way into heaven.

It's the fake as hell, flaky as well
Bend and stretch Holiness Twist.
Do what you like, namecall a ****
Cleanse with a twist of your wrist.
Donate a dime, go commit a crime
To church Sunday, be Jesus kissed
Suddenly resurrected, sins deflected
You're an ace at the Holiness Twist.

Appearances are most important
In the big holiness game of life.
You have to have the big house
The big car and flashy wife.
You have to have the perfect lawn
With the current rage of shrubs.
You have to wear the right clothes
And belong to the right clubs.

But the biggest thing to accomplish
To keep from seeming totally odd
Is you have to have the right and
Obvious choice for your god.
It has to be the right kind of stuff;
It can't be Eastern unless it started
Back when there were miracles
Like when the waters parted.

It's the fake as hell, flaky as well
Bend and stretch Holiness Twist.
Do want you like, namecall a ****
Cleanse with a twist of your wrist.
Donate a dime, go commit a crime;
In church Sunday, be Jesus kissed
Suddenly resurrected, sins deflected
You're an ace at the Holiness Twist.

You go to church on Sunday
And then you've done your part.
Instead of saying “I hate that *****
You just say “Bless her heart.”
Monday starts the week anew
With dog-eat-dog intention.
Live and let live and the like
Seldom rates a mention.

Help the poor and needy
Doesn't pull too much weight
When measuring by dollar signs
To decide what is truly great.
The Bible verses get changed:
“Do unto others” is rewritten
To “Do what we can get by with.”
Thus is the common man smitten.

So you allow the Congress
To do whatever they want:
Outlaw our rights and rob us,
Laugh at us and then flaunt
That nobody can touch them
As they bleed the land dry.
We're just to bless their hearts
While the watch us slowly die.

We can keep on pretending
That everything is just,
Then go to church on Sunday
And brag about “In God we trust”,
Or we could wake the hell up
And start to participate
In what used to be our country
Right now before it's too late.

But that would mean standing up
And not just going along
And not following on party lines
Not singing the downtrodden song.
It means questioning our leaders,
But, you see, right there is the rub.
If we stop ourselves from being robbed
We can't belong to the Hypocrite Club.

Everywhere I go
Everybody wants to know
"Where's the lady"
They all ask
I answer, hiding behind a mask
Of smiles and laughs,
And say to them:
"She's gone, she won't be back again;
I don't care"
And shrug my shoulders.
But now my life is so much colder
I walk alone, the crowded streets
And tell my tale to friends I meet
Then I turn, walk on with the truth
With tear-filled eyes
I think of you

Shadows moving down
these empty, vacant halls
playing with our memories
and dancing on the walls
their voices echo moments
that we painted with our love
as my sadness still recalls
that your in the sky above
as melancholy is drifting
in intoxicating wafts
a time when you were here
when we all felt so safe

this time a slow reminder
to live within today
to be careful who you know
and be gentle what you say
as I reach out for you
the shadows slip away
and knowing in that second
I can't buy back yesterday

I can only remember
how wonderful it all was
and be ever grateful
for the ...time
that we all shared down here.

Cherie Nolan © 2016

Earth to earth, Oh ashes to ashes and dust to dust,
How strange, how familiar, human connection is untrusted
when we awake, each passing day, knowingly that by sunset
Those words would be read out loud
Over an innocent, black brother’s grave site tonight
Too many tears, too many mishaps
who scattered those bullet caps,

Too, many innocent lives have been taken
By the hand of the nervous police,
Even The birds keep gliding in the air shows solidarity
In respect of the dead:
Some human wish they were like them they said.
A charge is one thing. A conviction is another
Black lives does matter.
Who pulled the trigger, which got the last laugh?
The innocent or the victims

More weeks of demonstration,
the fight for the white house continues with words not arms
Blood in the Inner City Streets, subways
and shopping malls, bias and frustration, sound the alarms

Who pulled the trigger, which got the last laugh?
The guns, or the victims,

My poetics tone this morning.
voice your opinion

We sit three stools away and can not talk
bold enough to understand
one another.

She moves to the seat next to me and asks
if my bacon is crisp.  I say more
or less—want a bite?

There is a tattoo of a cross on her forehead.
My cousin Beryl done that to me when
I was 12, horsin’ around, he was 19
and no good.

She goes to *** or powder her tattoo; I pay
my bill and walk outside under a sky
so blue I want to cry.