Justified

Have you ever had it with a religious zealot,
a fundamentalist blank slate?
“Up to and beyond your eyeballs” had it?
Have you ever grown so weary of their hatred,
their homophobia, their pious judgments and their insidious
disrespect that you felt a writhing at the scalp line?
I had to look no further than my own family, a cousin.
(O the shame, the blank out, the insanity),
wherein the nose pointed up
and smugness was worn like a badge
and self-righteousness oozed out like some other-worldly stench.
(What’s that you say?  I’m going to Hell?
  What’s that you say?  The Pope is too.
  Did I hear you right?  Gays should have no rights?
  O, and now you say they should be shot?)

Curious, this advocating of murder.

Reason did its best, for years, yet there remains
many who are simply beyond all hope.
O the weariness of her haughty, high horse nonsense;
(to hell with the constitution, to hell with human decency,
to hell with other’s rights--to hell with all those who did not agree
with her fundamentalist beliefs.)
And on top of all that, treason, calling the President gay,
(a fundamentalist skill--talking out of one’s ass),
along with even more lovely racism; calling Michele Obama a gorilla.

Ocular pressure, scalp line excruciation.

First, I hung up, as I felt I was conversing with an 8-year old.
(Perhaps she’d get the message, this middle aged adult.)
No, that was too much to ask.  She called right back.
So I put it adamantly, although politely, to keep such hatred
and homophobia and racism to herself--”I don’t like it.” 
And I thought it to be a reasonable request.
(But role models abound, like the late Jerry Falwell,
who blamed 9-11 on Gays and Lesbians.)
Thus, there came only insolence, arrogance, argument. 
Zero apology, zero humility.

I wiped the spittle from my face.
First, I pointed out the blatant hypocrisy;
then, a sincere Fuck You (as there was nowhere else to go),
and a permanent disconnect.


40 Lines
Writer’s Cramp Winner
June 20, 2014