i've always written poetry
with the passion of a preacher to sermon.
i experience for literature feelings
which i imagine others to offer religion.

i've never been spiritual.
full stop.
my cynicism denies me wonders -
tired tale, sure, true as any other,

but poetry evokes the holy ghost
a being more skillful, more elegant,
setting my mind's eye alight with
saintly delusions of grandeur

it curls from my pen, bleeding fire into my notebook
if there is Elysium, it is in
the private Eden created between
my mind and my notebook.

if there is peace, it is in libraries,
eyes poring over words pouring over
life, utterly human life, told in a
way that is raw and violent and righteous,
connecting one's private introspections to words.

if religion has a purpose,
a redeeming quality, it is
community, connection, consistency.
God Is Always and Always Has Been and Always Will Be.

the great human collective,
the experience of poetry, of life,
the art of internal monologue,
it persists. it persists.

no, i am not spiritual -
it does a disservice to us.
it unjustly ignores the
holy human hand in our history

time is a chronicle of the messy
affairs of human choice and experience .
it seems unfair to me,
to pin all the blame on a

convenient
divine
deux ex machina
slash
scapegoat.

don't give the big guy all the credit!
the exhausted masses had a hand too!
take some responsibility for
humanity's divine man-made persistence!

so, yes, i experience poetry
with the rapturous fascination
as sinner to saint -
yet there is no sin in poetry.

by nature it is a
narcissist's and hedonist's pass time.
so there is only wonder
and childlike curiosity,
and the slightest sliver of hope to move forward,
which, really,
what else is religion good for anyways?