Dance, Dammit!

Christianity has become a delusion.
Row on row we all sit patiently watching,
The telling of yet another redemption story.

While inside,
Parts of us fall away and die,
Like old leaves,
in the hot white light.

We wonder why the smiles do not ease the pain.
Or if they ever did.
But we keep going back.
To that same dry well.

Smart dress,
All's well.
Cliche,
Cherry blossom cheeks
Even paint begins to fade.

And there is nothing.
Nothing.
That can be done.

Until?

Fire

I remember one evening you told us a dream you had,
Of the cities lighting up.
We all smiled and chattered excitedly then.
And later that night, the stories lingered with us.

Mine were like little fireflies.
Young and aimless lights,
Flickering inside my belly.
Dashes and dots rearranged themselves to swell my chest with hopes,
Never thinking once,
That on the morrow they would die.

Fire.
You want to see fires starting?
I see a fire now... racing from West to East.
And I always thought that fires were supposed to mean good things...
You always told me,
"Fire of the Holy Spirit" this, "Fire of the Holy Spirit" that.
Well.
Isn't it just like us.
Focused so much on squeezing blessing out of a stone.

I watch the fire burn straight to the forests edge, and collide into the treetops with no mercy.
It pours out across the body of a grassland plain.
Tall stems bow and wither in the heat;
and there is no water left in any of them,
to slow the blaze one breath.

I used to think, friend, that fires meant something good.
That I should skew my reason, to fit what we all wanted, and needed, to see.
"Surely it means revival!"
"Surely God is with us!"
"Surely... the grasses were not destroyed."

But now I know....
That the death card, can be read as fortune.
Can be read as gain, can be read as new life.
And the death card...

The death card can be read wrong.