FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Your love is one of my first memories

I didn’t even need to see your face

Our bond already real in my trusting mind

I just believed the words and I felt safe

I don’t remember when everything changed

Your first threats to take your love away

How it felt to love you so much

Yet to feel so afraid

And all I wanted was for you to love me back

Give me just a little peace of mind

So hard to understand your grudge against me

When I was just a little child

Do you remember the first time I cut my little wrists?

I wanted to show you I hated me just as much as you did

But I left the church pews and closed the New King James

Won’t catch me back under that cross, my tail between my legs

I loved Christ with all my heart, soul, strength and might

Washed all up in that blood sacrifice

But when you’re taught to classify in black and white

You need help in reading blurry Bible lines

So the nuances within it are destined to be delivered at the discretion

Of manipulative mediators of the message

Mine rained fire and brimstone on my imaginative mind

I spent my nights awake, suspended over hellfire

My days in my closet hiding from the world

Pious and penitent Pentecostal girl

The burn of God’s wrath was cooled by the sweet love of his son

Trying to trust he was in my corner with unconditional love

But “Jesus Loves Me” songs can’t drown out

The fires of hell or the waters that drowned

The whole damn world on a power trip

If that god revealed itself today I wouldn’t worship it

Now I gloat in its fictitiousness

Finally free from its maliciousness

When I remember Jesus though, my heart feels warm

Leaving him when I left the church left me torn

Because he had saved me from his horrible dad

Who I always tried to love but he was written where I can’t

Cruel old god with all the bad characteristics of man

Inconsistent, narcissistic, hypocritical, jealous and mad

“Kill the babies, take the virgins” war god

“Part the seas, drown the world” storm god

So many of Christ’s words sat right in my heart so I kept them

But as for Sky Daddy I’ve grown from private to public resentment

Because although that monster is just an idea

Why the fuck are we giving it to innocent people especially kids

It belongs back in Middle Eastern BCE

No excuse for such ignorance in several centuries

It was brought by the sword but now that’s sheathed

And the populace is free to think and read

We killed god with the Enlightenment

I guess modern America skipped it

But me, I left Yahweh in the dust

That dumb old dogma’s not for us