Hypocrite 3

Hurry!
get back in your Bible,
right behind Romans 15:2!
wipe that look of your face,
and stop gossiping about
who is dating who,
who is mad at who,
who needs to lose weight,
who needs to gain weight,
who doesn’t like who,
who might be gay,
who’s carrying who’s baby,
who’s lusting after the pastor,
who was wearing a too-short skirt,
and who was showing too much cleavage at church last Sunday.
get that smile back on your face

…..hurry!

other Christians are coming!
(act saved)
you can go back to your true self after they leave


by Alieux


I woke up in the middle of the night and I was in the mood to write, and this is what came out. Then I went back to sleep.
When I'm working on my short stories, I know what the story will be about, though sometimes the character's personalities are so strong that they tend to steer the story in a different direction and I have to decide to either bring it back on course or let the story write itself, but with poetry, I hardly ever know what direction the poem is headed. After the pen is in contact with paper, I'm always surprised-sometimes pleasantly, sometimes unpleasantly with the results.
I know that God gave me the Bible Verse Romans 15:2. I say that because that's the only thing I can remember from the dream I must have had just before I had awakened.
A few hours earlier, I had gone to bed just after talking to a friend in Atlanta who was upset because she's the subject of hateful gossip spread amongst people not at her full-time job or her part-time job or at the gym, but at a Holiness church she attends, of all places. I had assured her that of all places in addition to her home, the church, and a Holiness church at that, should be the one place where one is judged only by God. She told me that while some have accused her of being a lesbian, others have accused her of trying to date the pastor; she can't be both at the same time, can she? Then she told me that her mother was told she was a lesbian by her fellow choir members, but her father was upset because he was told by members of the Usher Board that she was trying to seduce the pastor and the assistant pastor's son, and that her dresses and skirts are too short, I told her to just laugh it off. I heard a pastor say once, "how are we gonna get along in Heaven if we can't get along here on Earth? I assured her that she wasn't alone; for as long as I have lived on this earth, I've been the subject of the most hateful gossip imaginable from the inside of the Church. Anyway, I fell asleep and had a dream, woke up, wrote the above and ten minutes later, went back to sleep.

Not in vain

  ''Let all Black Poets die as trumpets,

And be buried in the dust of marching feet.''

                                 --- Etheridge Knight