Ardent Repetitions

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It’s hard to think that churches aren’t weird. Big ornate
enclosures kept quite vacant nearly all the year – except
for Sundays when small phalanxes of worshippers appear
to chant and sing and bow and kneel and otherwise
commune with one another hoping to attune themselves

to rituals designed to dampen fear by reinforcing notions,
promulgated by approved officiators – solemn, robed
and queer as extra-planetary aliens – pled in prayers
completely clear in their expression of belief that something
other than what anyone can see provides a ride and guide

to grand Eternity. I suppose that any love is just as odd:
to pour yourself into a human heart is certainly no stranger
than to give the thing, in church, to God. I once knew a man
for whom I would have done quite anything he asked –
like a zealous fundamentalist – from suicide to murder –

rope or knives or guns or gas – pluckily I would have sliced
my soul into a sheaf of pieces for this creature, bade him
take the whole, and lay them in a stack. Luckily he didn’t
love me back. I wonder if divinity’s the same: indifferently
responding to the ardent repetition by the faithful of its name.


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