My "Religion"

Some people say they
believe in Jesus;
Funny how so few
remember how he said
it was "nearly impossible for a rich man
to enter the kingdom of heaven."
I kind of like most
of what they said he said;
but I don't want to go
ANYWHERE
when I'm dead;
except amid the oaks of Stearns Cemetery
one more time by my sweet grandmother,
I might like to go to bed

I've lived in my ancestral Sweden
where in obeissance to tradition
the government keeps marvelous
marble churches and warbling priests
in neat, reverent clothes...
but only the old and dying go

"why?," do you ask?
Well, as the young Swedish know:
let the dead
worship the dead.

I have friends who swear by Mohammed,
ones who love what "Krishna" said,
ones who won't on flesh dine,
even ones who wear the Wiccan sign;
Me, I laugh with the cosmos
and with whores and sinners dine

I've lived in Thailand
where amid palm jungles, rice farms,
and beaches of red-hot sand
they worship the wizened Buddha...
and enlightened monks read
his teachings in an ancient tongue
(and give some simpler advice in one more young)
and they all leave reverently
as they have for millenia...
and what of it?
It's not that I'd make anyone
give up the faith of their fathers...
but I have moms and a dad,
faiths and fathers I have none

But as I said
I advise no faithful reader
to against the faithful lift a sword,
for of white-lies the world is full
without which this earth
might have long since sunk
into dirth, blackness and gore.

Likewise,
speak to me no evil
of spirits or of drugs:
don't wanna hear your tale of addiction,
poverty, and woe;
Maybe I've devilled through worse
or maybe I really don't care

It's a brave new world
and storm into it
!!!I DARE!!!;
I've practiced dark ESP powers
in the midnight hours,
and for a few tabs of LSD
I'd gladly sell any immortal soul...

for you see,
the goal of my heart
is neither to live nor to die
but only this bardic art