Believe It Or Not

Believe It Or Not

(With apologies to Job, the Psalmist, and Ecclesiastes)

I sat upon the bed

Of a shiny pickup truck

And watched the 

People passing by

Parading homo sapiens

Hoping they would

Live forever but knowing

They were

Born to die.

And I called God to account

I asked why he or she was

Conspicuously

Inexplicably

Missing in our life's equation?

Why, as the world

Convulses with

Horrendous violence

Is he or she

Deafeningly silent?

You can't, I said

Have Chosen Ones, the

Holocaust showed us that!

But do you care

For anyone?

What about the children

Beaten bloody

Raped and murdered

By your children in the bush?

Or in Middle Eastern

Desert lands where 

It's said you gave

Birth to laws and goodness

But that too was a lie

As the Caananite women

And their kids

Learned to their

Great sorrow.

Or other humans in

Those same lands -

Iraq and Syria - who today

Hang on with fingernails

Chewed to the bone

In fear of horrors too

Explicit to describe

In mere words.

So where are you now

If you weren't there before?

Is is perhaps better to

Not believe than to be

Left with such a

Paradox of might

And misery.

Unless, of course, it's 

All a lie and has always

Been a lie

That you are nothing

More than a scrubby

Semite's dream.

But please stop laughing

It's not funny anymore

To the people tortured

Killed in your good name

Even in the USA - 

Where people pray

To you each day

And know that you

Want them to say

They trust in you

On signs and

On their money, too -

Tortured people in the

Name of all that's

Good and right and...

Godly.

Righteousness defined

As water boarding

Because the swine

Did not deserve to

Live and we know that

You will forgive as 

This is the land

You founded with

Our founders who 

Were good Christians

Just like you.

So why do you desert us

Why hide your face

In troubled times

We don't know what to do

You've given us too little

Information.

And so we must conclude

You don't exist you're

Just a ghastly fiction

An apparition we no

Longer need for we 

Know how it all began

And it wasn't in 

The desert sand

And there isn't one

Thing you can do

To heal our broken

Hearts and lives

And bring back all

Those we have lost

To those who said

They believed in you.

[Copyright © 2015 by Lowell A. Anderson.  All rights reserved.)