thisbud

All my friends are true-blue
atheists. Right on time for the hour of the
Whopper, signalled to land like the goodyear
zeppelin by mr goebbels and
Associates, Inc. They hung marconi's magic
box from every streetlamp and brewhaus
rafter, that manna of devil's food into
upturned beak might fall.

mr goebbels and Associates still live
in Asuncion, Prague, Stuttgart, Beijing,
Anchorage. Hi! I live in Truth
or Consequences, New Mexico. In this desert god
cares ratass for faith. It's what have you done
for me lately. It's
don't drink the sidewinder's
oil twice. Either we present our bellies
to the fang, or forge the double-edged
blade, look both ways before
crossing
over, swing
the divining rod at full
tolerance.

On all-night FM I was delivered
of a sermon by
the Bean Education Conspiracy of Lincoln,
Nebraska, railing to save me from folic acid
depletion. Beef
is real food. Milk does a body,
good.

Um hmm. Yup.

Theism is the right crutch, atheism
the left. Were we meant for faith or
faithlessness, we wouldn't be water. We'd be kick-
backed on
the astral sofa, channelsurfing the Big Screen. Instead, we got
mitochondria and minutes.

What weakling god pounds the table
for worship? Worship is the hunger by which
we devour one other. The starved, the
triple-crossed, the diamond-eyed
are His cup of blood, creatures sunken like brands
into the rawhide survivors at Treblinka,
Buchenwald.

Believe it
or not, friend, you are going
on a cruise. Eden's seas are veteran umps: drowning out the
suckers, spreading safe for the cynical
child. If
Here you can't marry aether's gold
with the shit, you will be quadriplegic
There. If
Here you can't
predict which poppy blooms
first
in a plain of ten thousand, you will be blind
There. If
Here the squabbling twins of paradox
are not born
on your back, you will be
homeless
There.

SPECIAL NOTE FROM THE POET:

I wrote this one for my friend Bud. I haven't seen Bud in years. Life on the road.

Bud is in his seventies. I think he's what they call a lapsed Jew. Now he's an atheist, partly because of the nasty shit he saw go down under the Reich. That'd do it, all right.

Bud liked to engage me in late-night metaphysical dialogues. Then he'd get mad at my opinions. He very much wanted me to disbelieve in god too. I worried him.

I'm okay with that. I told him over and over -- I believe in nothing. Belief is for the lazy, for dweezils who want someone else to run their laps.

It enraged Bud that anybody could claim an experience of god -- but hey, a baked potato does it for me.

Maybe Bud struggled so hard to bury a dead version of god, that the entire soul of the universe got washed from him to boot.

Even though I made Bud uncomfortable, he was kind to me.

Bud, wherever you are, may the Great Potato bless you.