poem of the day 05.29.14

when old friends become devoutly religious

at first there is some shock

or it is like watching a bad horror film

or there is no shock and it was always inevitable

but there is a hollow sadness

not unlike standing around someone’s wake

and you wonder if there was anything

that you could’ve done to save them

maybe called more

invited them out for a beer and some conversation

been the one to lend an ear and offer advice

instead of spending years stuck in your own malaise

looking for the kind of answers

that only come through bathing in fire

still you can’t believe that this is the guy

yes, that one posting photos of church breakfasts online

telling everyone that his favorite book is the bible

was once the dude who screwed everything that walked

behind his wife’s back

or how that one is now this foreign specimen

who enjoys christian rock and no longer drinks alcohol

was the one who used to beat his woman for no reason

or he was the one who always went to strip clubs with you

the one who got drunk in bars

and then made you spend hours casing downtown

looking for whores

it’s hard to look at these transformed hypocrites

dressed in their sunday best with their lifeless families

praising jesus, jesus, always jesus

hating gays and immigrants and all other enemies of the state

when you were once with them

swinging baseball bats at senior citizens

on snowy highways caught in a sweaty speed pill fervor

stealing tip money and dumping beer

on drunk girls in even drunker bars

listening with jealous glee as they told you blow job stories

done in church parking lots on the cheap

or how you sat idly in parks on humid summer nights

as they molested underage girls on clay tennis courts

you wonder what it was that caused them to fall so badly

to take up such a fragile and transparent yoke as organized religion

age or boredom or both?

and what kind of seething, perverted rage

still exists deep within the well of them

when it could come out to shine anew

you hope to hell that this is just temporary

but deep down you know that the religion trap lasts forever

and that there is nothing else to do for these lost souls

but close the internet browser on them

don’t answer the emails and never pick up the phone

when they call

mourn their memory until the pain no longer exists

get on with the living

instead of becoming as they have

just another one

of the walking dead

waiting on the afterlife.