On A Sunday

The pastor
He spits out his gum.
He bangs the pulpit and
reads a passage from the gospel of Big Poppa E.
His devout followers, we each take a turn.
Poppa tells us how he crosses the street, afraid of snipers.
He’s always worried that the person behind him at the movie theater will
blow his brains out.
He does this to himself.
Paranoid.
Masochist.
Freak.

Later, from the first epistle of Palahniuk,
we read of his travels to the podunk
Testy Festy in Missoula, Montana.
Souvenir shops with homemade dildos.
Can’t find a human penis? Use a cow’s.
The men, they slap women in the face with their hard-ons.
The women, they bite the hanging testicles off of moving motorcycles.
Biggest bite wins.
They do this to themselves.
Perverts.
Masochists.
Hicks.

Our congregation of five,
we gather here
to feed our unnatural desire for something.
Searching for a god we only find in words.
To worship him.
The god of pen.
The god of paper.
The goddess of ink
and life-long poverty.
Big Poppa, he has this parable
about writers lining up outside the welfare center
needing rent, food stamps, coffee, life.
We do this to ourselves.
Believers.
Masochists.
Writers.