Blessing for an Atheist

My childhood God was heavy
like men’s hands pushing me underwater
holding my life in the baptism
giving it back conditionally.

I built a fortress around me
to hold off the terror of this god
I must keep the heavy hands off.

I rejected that Mormon cast ,
I became outcast
I secretly cried, and now cry
when I’m made to feel outsideness,
by the sound of plainsong..

Denied morality because of unbelief
seen as outcast — unclean,
I must build a fortress around me
To survive the damning righteous air..

Refused then, feeling refused now in places that proclaim love
De-baptized by me, by them I couldn’t go into churches.
unless there was incense, elaborate ritual, great paintings
wondrous gilded madonnas. murmurs, chant and ancient smell..

‘It’s old stuff, alienation, angst, god is dead stuff’ she sd
This old stuff does not go away like the drift of Reagan’s mind
into warm Christian theology, meditations on hanging laundry
old thoughts don’t go away. God is always in question.

God is an answer without question in cathedrals
But, here, I listen to Bach’s entwining sound
And hold my fortress around me,
because I don’t believe in God.
I am only a needful being,
Like everyone else, a sweeper,
a Janus, bearing souls I love,
an atheist seeking blessing.

The Rant of the Blizzard

2/12/2006

(A polester made a new diagram of us,
to explain our political trends and thought
put us in a big metaphorical box
and made a blizzard of all our concerns.)

Black are the ribbons we travel on
to the edge of binding attitudes,
beliefs in this world, roads to go
to the outer walls. of our box.

At the Far High wall lives Authority
heavy with religion, preachy
pundits, sanctimonious legislators
families with perfect Fathers
controlling all emotion
all function, sex, shit and temper
where the Good achieve and
the achievers are the Good.

At the antipodal low earth wall are
individual antonymous men and women.
emotional, loving and exchanging
love, lives, fluids, touches, monies
engaged, all responsible for all,
the failing, the ill, the healthy, the rich,
taking risks to find universal good.

The black ribboned arteries flow back
and forth between these walls to the edges,
of our social box left to right
from fulfilment to survival of the fittest
from ecology to the joy of consumption
from empathy to just happy to survive,
driven by plenty draining into scarcity
the feminine garden of Eden into
the valley of righteous competition.

We live in this big diagramed box
linked into a nation by black ribbons
and video electronic exchange
forming new tribes yaking away
in one mind blogger echo chambers
gated, we become distrustful.

Id like a Virgil to take my hand
lead me along the black ribbons
through the labyrinth of belief
past the humanistic sciences
through the rational, irrational
mud scape of politics
refugees and cowardly men
christ, mohamad and markets
the hidden hand, creationism
the unchanging world
of untaxed fortunes

The cracks deepen
I would like to tell Virgil
the republick may not hold
in the race to the bottom.
The blizzard is here
the rotten rant too
goes on and on
until all is covered o’er

Will the sun never shine?