Rolling On the Floor, Laughing My Ass Off Because I Started To Really Examine My Early Experiences with Organized Religion

By Rich Boucher

I can’t give you the exact measurements
of hindsight, sorry, but all I do know
is that it makes no sense now, years later,
to consider that I really believed
I was drinking Jesus’ blood
and eating his flesh just on the say-so
of a priest who didn’t even know me,
but to maybe recognize my face
sometimes, on a Sunday.

Why would I have chosen to think
I was being a cannibal about God?
Why would I have desired to believe
I was the good kind of vampire,
with a deep-down body thirst for penance?
Why do drops of rain opt for striking dry ground?
What would a scarecrow do with a brain if it had one?

He would say, “The body of Christ”,
and I’d reply, “Amen.”

And then a miracle was supposed to happen.

But if transubstantiation could have been
spoken into happening that easily,
why didn’t I simply request
that the priest say, “The body of Lynda Carter”,
so that I could say “Amen” to that?

And then a miracle was supposed to happen.

The keys to a brand new Corvette? Amen.
A bank account that puts me in the Winner’s Circle
in Forbes magazine? Amen.

A miracle is supposed to happen.

The panties of my sixth-grade English teacher?

Amen.