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
