APRIL IS NATIONAL POETRY MONTH

The idea is enough to make me puke, but I changed my mind after reading Acres of Books' website. It reads "April is National Poetry Month! (take a poet to lunch)." I'm all in favor of free meals, so come on people. I'm a poet. Pony up and buy me some food.

Maybe I should try to earn that meal. So here's a new poem. I combed through my stacks of unpublished poems and found this nice ditty about religion. I thought it to be timely considering the pope, who by the way looks and sounds like a creep, is visiting the United States.

I hope you like it. If not, send hate mail to Tim Hull. He'll get right back to you.


I’M SPIRITUAL BUT NOT RELIGIOUS
dumber words have never been spoken
except for maybe those in the bible
but I wouldn’t know – I don’t read fairy tales
a person who says they are spiritual but not religious
is obviously a young adult looking for a way to comprehend
their growing feeling of apathy toward a belief that was shoved down their throats
beginning the second they popped out of their mother’s nether region
or a slightly older misguided wannabe intellectual who thinks
before they speak and gets through life by regurgitating tidbits of info
they’ve overheard from mouths attached to brains they assume are smarter than theirs
saying a person is spiritual but not religious is like me saying
I’m gay but I don’t fuck dudes –
you can’t have one without the other
religion is spirituality and spirituality is religion
they’re both just words that mean roughly the same thing
those who say this silly statement are too close to the fire to see the flames
because if they could, they’d realize how the influence of religious leaders worldwide
has created an environment where supposed spirituality can’t be outrun
so when you say you’re spiritual, you’ve already lost
because you’re speaking their language
the preachers, pastors, fathers, rabbis, shamans, popes, gods, sheiks and monks
succeeded in planting their vocabulary into our brains, whether we want to pretend to dislike it or not
because saying what they really mean could cause harm in all sorts of ways
funny looks from strangers
scoldings from parents
disapproval from co-workers
no Christmas gifts from friends
these people are afraid to offend a higher power
but they shouldn’t be
there is no higher power to offend
but the implication of I’m spiritual but not religious suggests otherwise
it’s the PC way of telling the world a person isn’t happy with organized religion,
the kind that wastes Sunday morning sleep-in time,
but who is?
the world would be a much better place if those who preached this hypocritical mantra
would ditch the act and join forces with those who aren’t afraid to say in explicit terms
what they believe
and what it is these people believe, you ask?
not sure, but my guess is it has something to do with the ability to see how thousand-year-old works of fiction continue to wreak havoc on daily life circa 2008
shouldn’t we be smarter than this? the educated ask
yes, we should
but we’re not
because a major percentage of the population is more than happy to go along for the ride, even if that means ruining the one shot we’ve all been given to make this life as exciting and entertaining as possible