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Moldy Pews
The wooden pews
Lined with age and sermon
Laced with evangelism and bigotry
This was an old church indeed
Both in ideology and disposition
Planted by a dark and foul seed
Built by a warring breed
I took my seat
With intense indifference
I was here for someone else
With no intention to listen
But those around me were hardly,
Hardly a chatty bunch
So I turned and peeled my eyes
To the man in front of me
He was a strange man
Dressed head to toe
In robes of white
And he was certainly the chatty one
His sermon aged me a day and a year
And left quite the ache in my ear
He opened the Bible
With a compartment inside
And oh! What a sight
When he held up the gun
It glistened in the pale moonlight
He admired with gleaming eyes
A silver barrel, ivory grip
Turned it in his hand
Over and over
He took a trip
To his own f****d up dreamland
What on flat earth?
That doesn’t belong in there
Put that thing down
Down before you hurt somebody
That’s not a toy
Don’t you see?
And he did agree
For to him death is a chore
His chore
His responsibility
“For the angel of death came to me
Like a typhoon in the night.
Swift and unseen,
And causing others quite a fright”
He said with conviction
But he was not dead
And I looked around in quiet confusion
“This man is crazy”
I said to the woman seated next to me, with deep desperation
But she gave me a stern look
And with a finger across her mouth
I was sent back to the man with a gun in his book
What he spoke seemed nonsensical
But the crowd around me they sat,
Sat one the edges of their seats
Their rotten pews
And moldy cushions
It all soaked up the words of this man in white
So I sat back in rueful resignation
And aged a year and a day longer
As the man spoke of his god’s criteria for cannon fodder
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