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It's Suffering
I don't have
Much luck in life.
So I'm
Pretty sure
I won't be accepted
Back into community college
With my dirty clothes,
My unwashed body,
My long, unkempt beard,
And my felony record.
My fingernails aren't
Clean
Like the rest of them.
And I'm also
Pretty much certain
That I won't be published
Any time soon.
Nothing that good
Could ever happen to me.
I'm resigned to my fate
At this point.
It is my place to suffer,
As God said
Smoking his pipe.
I'm the type who doubts
So I need that element
Of suffering
Just to keep my faith.
It draws me closer to Him.
In fact,
It's the only time I pray.
If I didn't suffer
I think I'd be an Atheist
Like Finish, or Swedish people,
All those Nordic countries
Where times are good
And there is very little
Use for God.
But I
Am more like Africa,
Senegal perhaps.
So if you tell me
That there is no God
I have a hard time understanding
You.
"I can't go on."
"I will go on,"
Becket once wrote.
How do you go on
Without God?
I just don't understand.
There are no Atheists in foxholes.
Atheism is a previlege
I will most likely
Never be party to.
Christianity takes
A Gideon
And the patience of one
To read a long book, and pray.
If anyone ever tells you different
They're lying to you.
There's a strong church
And then there's a megachurch
And personally
I think the world would be
A better place
If we burned them all down
And sent the ministers there
To the madhouses,
Or, frankly,
Jail.
Make them suffer, I say.
Anything but the continued
Collecting of welfare
Checks
Every Sunday.
But this poem isn't about that.
This poem is about
My luck, or
Lack thereof,
And suffering.
I was born with bad luck.
At an early age
I learned
Not to gamble
Because I just had
Natural bad luck.
If I bet heads,
It came up tails.
If I neglected to study
There was a pop quiz.
If I vandalized a house
I was caught.
I'm an honest man
But I have not
Lived
An honest life.
You would think that
With my bad luck
I would learn
Not to take this gamble.
It isn't true
That crime doesn't pay.
Crime pays well.
That's why people commit crime.
But, after a while,
You have to live with your sin.
You have to live with these things you do.
They don't let go of you.
And when you look up
One day
And reflect on the fact
That you haven't
Taken
A hard look in the mirror
In over a decade,
It's more than bad luck,
It's suffering.
