How the World Should Work

*Note: this poem contains heavily critical language directed toward God/religion. Please refer to the comments added afterwards for the author’s explanation. This is not intended to offend, but please use discretion when reading if you have are easily triggered by content that is critical to the topic.

Keep the Prayers

Keep the prayers, I request, to your own righteous self. They’re distant to me, meant for somebody else. I was close to your God, admittedly you see, until he ripped me apart; abandoning me. I’m told “There’s always a reason”. Yeah? Well I disagree. No purpose is found in response to my plea. His “love” ripped the life from my family tree and left nothing but branches, bare as can be. Yet I’m expected to thank Him for who he did leave? The knuckle and thorn that cause nothing but grief? I’m asked to embrace this great Sculptor and Thief, who steals life from creation while demanding belief? How twisted the logic of Religion must be to pass judgments on those who don’t blindly believe; we who dare question the infallibility of He who locks his own house and gives evil the key, corrupting his own tenants who in one breath could be free, if only this “Lord” would allow their release.

I don’t care what your prayers, pages, or priests tell you. There is no realm in which the amount of unwarranted suffering, death, and destruction that this world is subjected to might be justified. No false eternity, no empty promises, and no alleged punishment of they who oppress, rape, and murder will ever merit the evil allowed to dominate this world. These fables are nothing more than lies to masquerade the suffering as something worth tolerating. A pathetic grasp for meaning in a meaningless reality.

Breathe.

Look. I don’t want to offend. I only ask you to please comprehend that the time I would spend in devoted admiration of who I thought was a friend is something that, sadly, I can no longer commend. My mind’s discontent He can’t possibly mend, as I peer out this window at an empty dead end, in knowledge that I can no longer expend what strength I have left to either fight, nor contend. Did He create hope just to then apprehend the one tool we use to desperately suspend knowing that for every start, there’s an end, and that shadows and darkness will always descend, demonically disregarding the tales we’ve believed and the lives we pretend.

I’m conflicted, consumed and confused by this sense of abandonment I’ve no choice but to feel. Ashamed and deceived by His false rod and reel. I no longer find cause to embrace, heed, or kneel to the nothingness ignoring every cry and appeal; my pathetic attempts hide her pain, to conceal all the heartache she suffered and the hurt that Dad deals. Yet, through it all, she still prayed she might heal, and to some day break through that constricting seal, in hope that the answers she sought would, at long last, be revealed.

There are no words in the human lexicon which could even come close to adequately describing the profound sadness, hopelessness, and admitted hatred that such depressing hindsight instills during moments such at these.

Once more, I respectfully hope for your empathy and understanding, as I’m fully aware that many would label this as harsh, hateful conjecture. But this isn’t the hollow recant some closed-minded, short-sighted miscreant. These words contain the unabridged passions currently penetrating my deepest consciousness; nothing more.

So please, I ask that you forgive, because I can’t help but relive that month which felt more like a year, all the while plagued by inexplicable fear that her death was so close; unavoidably near. How vivid is that memory, hauntingly clear; the image of someone so close and so dear, in tubes as a shell of who, to this day, still appears. She, who through thoughts, I still see and still hear; only to watch was, once, so sincere, drift into darkness; no life to cohere. I sat next to her, writing through every cry, sob, and tear, and tried, oh so hard, to have strength; persevere as I begged Him to spare her from Death’s cold and austere touch so instead she, for once, might taste happiness. Or cheer.

I watched as it was pulled out of her. That final, feeble lifeline pathetically attempting to breathe life into her poor, poor lungs. I collapsed in terror, sinking down the wall of that room, utterly defeated and puddled in tears as I witnessed her body’s last desperate gasp for the oxygen that the fragility of its grip could no longer manage to grasp. That singularly frozen moment in time was, without the remotest of doubt, the absolute worst sensation I have ever experienced in my life, and one I would not wish upon even the most egregious transgressors of humanity. Feelings such as what was felt during that moment in infinity would not exist in a world claimed to have been created out of love. This is the harsh, inarguably candid truth.

Regarding my opinions and views of God as they exist today: I ask not that you agree. I have no request, nor desire, for your sympathy. I merely wish that these words of contempt fall on minds that are free. Free of the judgement that ‘till now would greet me I failed to articulate what I now, so emphatically, see.

For thirty years I have bowed as one faithfully vowed, yet I stand here today no more holier than thou. I simply no longer find cause to allow my unjust allegiance, the sweat from my brow to be shed for He, who tonight, I shout “I disavow”. It’s not born of vanity, and it’s not that I’m proud. It’s just that I’ve cleared His malicious black cloud which has long plagued my mind in the darkest of shrouds. So please. Keep the prayers. I just, don’t need them now.

I’m finally free, and the death of my mother…is how.

I thought I should clear the record for what it’s worth, because I do know and respect how touchy a subject this can be. I sincerely meant it when I wrote that it wasn’t meant to offend, I promise you that. Even after it happened, I hated knowing how those closest to me were going to interpret my thoughts and feelings. It was an inordinately depressing time during which I was simply in the darkest place I’ve ever been. To remain consistent with the type of full disclosure I find myself practicing in the wake of all this, I plan to upload another piece soon that delves into my surviving the suicide attempt I made going through it.

In closing: I say this with absolute sincerity, because I really do get it.

To any who might find themselves relating to this, my heaviest of hearts is with you. I can say after going through it all that I’m 100% convinced that the only way out of the darkness is through the light. And that light can come in the most unexpected ways; not just from the places we’ve been trained to look at. Please don’t ever forget that, no matter what anyone says to the contrary. Most of all…never give up on hope.

Thank you letting me to share this story with you. ❤️