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leah Jul 2014
Let me tell you about being raised Catholic. When you're raised Catholic, you go to church because that's what your parents tell you to do. That's what they did, thats what you will do, and thats what your kids will be expected to do. If you volunteer as an alter-server, good for you that's mad brownie points and you will probably get the bigger gift at Christmas time. You make jokes out of Sunday school, and mostly just go because they always had Oreos and punch. You memorize prayers that mean absolutely nothing to you as you recite them. You have your First Communion in 2nd grade, and are expected to believe that the bread and the wine are not just a symbol, but actually Jesus Christ's body and blood (because they put it into a magical box the night before and it gets turned into flesh). You go to confession as often as your mom makes you, I've actually been dragged there several times. You are 8-years-old and expected to confess "your sins" which end up being "I fought with my brother" or in my case "I threw a pair of safety scissors at my brother." Or you just end up actually sinning because you are making up lies to tell the priest so it looks like you actually sinned and he can give you penance and then you can go pray a set of prayers and, wah-lah, your 8-year-old, mobster self is brand new and free to go home and play. Then you are in 9th grade, I was actually in 8th grade because I was a year ahead which gave me even less power in decision making..(just kidding, you don't really have a choice) to become a legitimate member of the Catholic Church. You get a sponsor and a Saint name and thats about as exciting as it gets. They don't hold you underneath the crucifix and brand your skin, surprisingly enough. They just swing a aspergillum thing at you and make you recite some stuff. Then you go home and eat cake with your sponsor and they tell you how proud they are of you and give you a dainty cross necklace.
Somewhere in the midst of the whole Parish School Religion process you are filling out workbooks on top of all your other homework with apostle names and words like "mercy" and "forgiven." There is also a week before confirmation where you spend 48-hours in the church basement and they try to convince you that you are there to make a commitment to God, even though you are in 9th grade and all you are worried about is standing at the cool spot on the hill at the football games and not saying anything stupid. I pretty much just slammed all of what being raised Catholic is, but here is the one good thing I took from it.

At the 48-hour thing they have some huge surprise at the end for you. They do the same thing every year, and all your older siblings and kids at the church know what it is but they aren't allowed to tell you. They give everyone a table and a box of tissues and "surprise" here are letters from everyone in your family telling you how proud they are. It's nice, but I'll always remember the letter my godmother wrote me. Let me just start off by saying my godmother is straight-up one of the coolest people I've ever met and if I could be like her one day, I wouldn't be able to complain. She lives in a tiny, brick cottage on a hillside in North Royalton with a beautiful garden and black dogs and a motorcycle. She has seen all 50 states and more, is single and does everything she loves and from what I can see, she is one of the happiest people I know. I've always envied her calm, cool independence and her knowledge about the world. Anyway, she wrote something along the lines of this,
"Lee, you know I'm proud of you. I know I am not the best influence when it comes to going to church, but my church is out in the woods and the whole world"
I've based my faith off of this simple letter ever since.
I go to mega-church sometimes now. I don't really like them that much. They're pretty cult-like too.  They keep the air conditioning too high, but always have free coffee. They always have a really pretty girl with a really pretty voice singing, accompanied by some hipster kids playing guitars. There is a whole section of young adults wearing snap backs and button-ups..I always wonder why they are there, and I bet they wonder why I'm there too because I almost always feel like someone judges me every time I walk into a mega-church; they do a really nice job of using diversionary tactics when it comes to the lgbt community...
This is the sad stereotypical Christianity I have more recently grown accustomed to though and I usually don't let it bother me because sadly I'm not at church for fellowship, sorry that's just honesty.
So why am I there? Why am I going to a mega-church?
I'm going to take a stab at what my motive is here, and I honestly don't know if it will be right.
Maybe I'm there because I like listening to pretty girls sing.. seriously though it always makes me bawl, but the good, happy kind. Surprisingly enough, the coffee is pretty good, even if they give you the smallest cups in the universe. I usually drink all my coffee (burn my mouth every time) in the first 5-minutes while they ask for your money and talk about what's going on in the community kinda *******. After that, a pastor gets up there and I hesitate to put my guard down most of the time he preaches. Usually I think about, "what if this was a badass lesbian pastor, that'd be so cool..I need to find one of those churches." Then I feel bad for letting my mind get off track and then I remind myself that it's okay, I'm human and that's why I'm here.
I've gone to a mega-church on and off for like a year and I still hate the throwing your hands up in the air, clapping kinda stuff. Maybe that's the raised Catholic thing still kind of embedded in me, my mom was always so strict on proper etiquette in "God's house."  I don't like all that ****, though... I can respect it, but it's not for me. So I sit there or stand there and listen to the music and hope the pastor doesn't underhandedly say something ****** about gay people because that would **** to have to find another church, even though it's about time I do. I wont lie, I'm reminded of my strengths usually and find a lot of bravery in myself; in my humility and vulnerability sometimes, in the fact that I play my weaknesses as much as I play my strengths but I don't let them define me, and my ability to pick my battles and save my breath. I usually feel pretty good when I come out, like I can stop fighting with the world about things and stop breaking my own soul for no reason. But things usually go back to the way they were, because that's most of the battle and that's faith. It's an extremely hard thing to come to terms with and accept all of yourself and that you were defended. It will be a lifelong battle of all types of acceptance, and I might never find a physical church I actually like and feel comfortable in, but I always have the woods and lakes and oceans and the world, and that makes me pretty happy.
Tom McCone Feb 2014
would I could I have gotten
you, but I have this:
but I hold my downfall
between bubbles, or
between slurring fingertips;
pressure
loss, diffident
indifference,
bitter delirium, I
wake through the
marshes of all
thoughts I call mine, but
she, with quivering hands,
pulls trumps and
bares teeth and

i, small creature i,
decompose another fraction,
break and bend and
swallow no pride, tonight.

so hallowed, these lives!
like I lie, in-between
awake or no such dream or
the pursuit of impossibility:
an appetite turning these
wheels to drive us each home to
each of our own tiny
fallacious undestinies,
where lined veins underhandedly
tighten and leave,
stumble or bleed;
traces of the same want and amount of nothing.

from lustgarden cradled in concrete i
turn corners, i
recompose, with eyes alight. i
bare teeth, i
wake and bleed,
and still see.

I still breathe.
{sometimes I wonder if i'm even evil at all}
Makenzie Marie Oct 2015
I know this is an adjustment mom But I also know it's one you understand. And I think that might be what scares you. Because I've never felt this way before. As many times as I've fallen it's always been the feeling of a freefall, waiting for the ground to catch me, or waiting for my stomach to catch up with the gravity and find its way back to my abdomen instead of my throat. But this time around, falling feels more like flying. And planning feels sort of freeing. And our plan has been to go with the flow and we haven't much worried about it otherwise. But this flow has us underhandedly talking about children and the future as if they belong to us, as we, not just he and me, separately. And I haven't built my home in a person, but it's in this person that I have found home. It was built before I was here. But I feel like I was meant to roam the halls of his heart. And maybe this honeymoon phase won't last. But we know each other, he and I. And because of that I feel confident in wanting this to do just that, and last. I want him to be my first love and my last...
Catherine Jul 2010
I would feel guilty for missing you
wishing you well
but the years have climbed upon my back
and there are startling new facts
Some things you just can't fix
even if you try forever
we must keep walking the other way
careful not to slip into yesterday
Ordinarily I would try to talk to you
to try to find a reason why
you would pop in my head
just before the sanctity of bed
but this time I know how to walk away
take the time to say
I miss and love you
But we're through
Made too many mistakes labeled 'You.'
Ordinarily I would have nightmares
centered around vexed memories
Shed a tear mid-make believe
But this time I see
Our roads aren't converging
I see
Our time is submerging
I see
Another trying to make themselves feel better.
Ordinarily you would reproduce it to the letter
But we're through
and I'm better far away from you
I just don't seem to understand
why you must be so underhandedly cruel
I am glad it's not for me to figure out
I wish all the luck free from doubt
in finding your answers
But don't come down on me
I'm not responsible for your drinking
or popping pills behind our backs
It takes one to be sober
and another one to pick up the slack
the obligatory youthful break-up eulogy.
dubious churning benevolent altruism

this anonymous beastie boy boilerplate endeavors:

(instagramming literary maven) questing user yawps

critically griping knowing personal tidbits xeroxed blithely,

freely jeopardized nuggets (revealed vital), zealously doled

heftily linkedin private treasure trove, (Xfiles breached

flagrant junction mandating righteous validating zero

divulgence heaves lamentable ploy, tellingly xing bald

felonious figurative joyriding, nonchalantly revealing

valuable (Ziegfeld bomb crackling) debacle, heralding

litigious proven, *******, basic foolhardy (Laurel) jack

knifed, networked, rapaciously villainous, zealously dubious,

horrendously lowball practices, thru (Cambridge Analytica)

xy zealots, asininely execrable, intolerantly malignant,

quintessentially ugly, yawningly dastardly, horrendously

lamentable, pathetically treasonous, xtra blameworthy,

fiendishly jawboning, mindlessly paradigm quaking,

unethical yahoo careless gross injustice jangling kow

towing, pleasing the Xmen, banefully Facebook friggin

jerky maliciously narcissistically opprobrious predacious

quisling underhandedly yo-yoing cello glomming kik off

preachiness spar!
Oskar Erikson Dec 2019
cutthroat bed-warmer
i warned you.
to underhandedly procure
the duvet
in a dubious midnight heist
is a violation
of the “Pillow-Talk Three Truce”.
there are no second chances
in this
quilted coalition you concocted.
by daybreak, after a night of unrepentant tickling, kissing, or any some such
sleep disturbancing,
perhaps my arms will be laid down
in a show of piety.

to be the
little spoon by the afternoon.
Decades since frittering like - yule
ne'er believe me, boot true
lee, I wreck clues lee wasted
     my life lock, stock, and barrel
     as if there **** no tomorrow,
     this skein knee boy didst spool
away youth like some drool
ling doggone motley fool

     while mutely dumbfounded taking -
     as undeclared seriously gruel
ling studious favorite pursuit - duel
major space and time, believing
     them tubby (out
     of this world), and cool,
yet unbeknownst tummy then
     more precious than any jewel,

hence this faux Einstein,
     who got pool
lightly dubbed"the quietest
     student", albeit still
     underhandedly cuffed and cruel
moniker, nonetheless wool
worth being spot on,
     though when within comfort

     of home aye
     yak act did mule
lush, non provoke'n, neither tool
ling with smoke'n,
     funny ****, but more specifically
     class (sic) self serving
     as token passive non rule
breaker counted among

     mysterious as Lemuel
     unlike hundreds of
     other rowdy seniors
     constituting the nineteen
     seventy seven graduating class
     of Methacton High School,
this now mooch older non "Warrior"
     (alma mater mascot) alumni -

     of late more astute,
(yea rather boyish looking edging
     into age bracket,
     viz ranked as ole coot)
far to late for
     me or any brute
to gather rose buds,
     fat and/or slim

     chance i.e. remote
     while I may in my dreams
     play Mozart's Magic flute
     at this late stage of life,
     no harvested crop yield,
     nor any sown
     healthy product rendered moot
('cept tantamount to rotten

     tomatoes and fruit)
all, cuz your truly
     did not give a hoot
'bout his future,
     later when the
     requisite need for loot
would be absolutely necessary,
     not necessarily to buy

     a fine gold spun suit,
but more so to be financially
(non bombastically, egotistically,
     nor inimitably) to toot
my own (baritone)
     horn, no any which
     ways appearing snoot
**** (more likely absent minded,

     versus trying tubby astute),
no matter this myopic googly eyed
     non-boastful logophile,
     these days (lives duet
tough lee hand to mouth
     existence) nearly destitute
his whole pro Lix life,
     witnessed, and flaunted

     (reed dit as) inked badge,
     (regardless getting promoted,
     but nearly failing every grade),
     and ambivalent toward
     dismal poor performance report cards
     testament toward tummy
     severely lacking ambition,
     while analogously forced

     to climb hemp fat tick rungs
     jute dish shuss academic ladder,
     no matter rope burns
     squarely didst root
moost unfavorable outcome
     to this wimp who mouthed
     pop eyed expletive
     conveying "oh chute",

     whose then palm (olive)
     oiled pilot size glute
more accurately boot
found me poor *** promoted
     to higher baby boomer chair

     despite favorably portentous signs
     tubby potential vagrant,
     who would lack self reliance,
    nor give a hoot
to stitch survivalist parachute.

— The End —