Old Religion  

Remember what they didn’t teach you

At Harvard Business School

As those empty pool splattered Polaroids 

Of your too cool husband went up in smoke

About how JFK and Marilyn had a child

Used in Eastern Europe as a spy

Who after bringing down the briefs

Of almost every Russian official

Brought down the Berlin Wall

Now breaking bread with the dead

Why then are her hands not red

With the blood of so many

Like Shakespeare’s celebrated mistress

Her eyes unlike our risen mistrusted sun

Her breath unbeaten by that perfume

That extinguishes Auschwitz’s lingering gas

A hotel room in Zagreb City

With a girl who spoke hardly

Your illiterate claw on her cortex

As Cortés’ ghost slaughters traitors

Planting his cross in her garden

Where the moon rises

The shadow of our man stapled

To his spineless sulphurous body

A country with at least one Benedictine monk

With a recently installed vagina

The dodgy diva with a bald beaver pioneering

The concept of live ten-second internet sitcoms

Remember you are dust

And to dust you shall return

She’s hooked to the silver screen

Exposure to the Son prevents burning

He wrote that kings were divine

Leaving a son who proved otherwise

How quickly we define

What’s wrong with yours is right with mine

All their prize fathers worshipping

Stocks and stones skirts and bones

We go to church as we go to the toilet

With no explanation and the minimum of fuss

Those that never believe will never find thus

Throwing ourselves to hell being ourselves

Something we were withholding made us weak

Until we found out that it was ourselves

God it was rough out there I tell you

The only car that stopped a hearse I’d fallen out of

Monosyllabic cave dwelling freak show bliss

Name graven on hallmarked hands eyes a kiss

Our television worth more than your life

Illegal to inhale the non-believer on fire

The air functions as mired hieroglyphs

Memory more elemental than stones

And what’s your religion pal

I just do what Oprah tells me

Copyright © 2008, Charles Jason Lee