Salvation'sInTheCollectionBasket

I was born and raised a Catholic.
Brought up by an open-minded mom and a dad who displayed pious devotion to his faith, I thought I had the path to heaven paved for me.
But I’ve since learned that things hardly turn out the way they’re supposed to.
Because long gone are the days where I treated life as a game and the bible as the manual, trying to use its passages as passages to reach the kingdom. Trying to escape but I’m tired of it…I’m sick and tired of fools using Jesus as excuses for their ignorance.

So I wrote this poem, ballpoint to the point of breaking making indents on the cursed snake’s skin. With a pen I carved from the rib of Adam filled with the mistakes and regrets of the first lady…so I buried the forbidden fruit in the compost heap.

The religion’s latest dropout, but I’m finding my own way to get back in his good graces. But constantly I’m fighting the urge to fight with angels holding fiery swords and kick down the gates into paradise. But I can’t believe in it anymore..

Because if earth is hell, and hell is worse…
then everybody escaped to heaven and heaven was gentrified first.
So what if heaven had a ghetto?
Pearly gated communities with saints as security
So they trade their halos for wedding rings and offspring too naïve to listen to their parents when they tell them not to look down on the less fortunate that they donate their faith to every Sunday
While the rest live in thunderclouds
Drifting in public transit as they ride rays of light from state to state with tokens
And using condensation as train stations, commuting from rain drops to snowflakes
Taking express routes in the lightning.
Noses deep in hymn books, wearing frames that hold their vision like stained glass scenes in chapels praying that their prayers make the long journey across the street.
But as soon as they leave, they’re lining up down the block at the corner store holding food stamps for salvation but sincerity is long sold out.
Living off welfare, but they still don’t fare well, so they bid their farewells because love don’t live here.
Walking to perpetual Sunday school to witness devils doing drivebys and guardian angels duck and their wings shrivel in fear like they saw a deep fryer and they’re in lineups, trying to point out the kingpin but Satan’s in the shadows, smirk on his face laughing at how naïve we are..

Because we expect freedom and happiness, and clouds made of marshmallows and roads paved with gold, but what if nothing changes? What if the change we refuse to put in the donation basket that we keep telling ourselves we need is worth just as much as a prayer and a good deed, just tax deductible.
What if heaven had a ghetto and their system’s just as messed up as it is here and there’s nothing we can do about it? No programs, no donations, no change.
But even if that was the case…I’m leaving change and my own version of salvation in the collection basket..hoping you do the same.