A Bench of Bishops is the Devil’s Flower Garden
By David R. Cravens
A Bench of Bishops is the Devil’s Flower Garden
or
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Loathe Organized Religion
which is more bitter?
fruit from the tree of knowledge
or cyanide-laced Flavor Aid®?
Marshall Applewhite and thirty eight purple veils
lying extinguished about the cradle of every science
as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules?
or
embittered lives–good names blasted by mistaken zeal?
we have not even to risk the adventure alone
GOTT MIT UNS?
(for comets are made of ice)
soaked in the brine of myth and madness
reading poetry as prose
everybody warms themselves to a different fire
yet
slouching toward Bethlehem
those patient and earnest seekers after truth
(scholars of the Septuagint mistranslated almah, the Hebrew word for ‘young woman’ into the Greek word, parthenos, ‘virgin’
found
three days journey inland
not fastened to a surface of stone
but hanging suspended in mid-air
an enormous Spanish galleon
listing slightly starboard
rigging adorned with orchids
dirty rags of sails blowing gently from its masts
and inside
a thick forest of flowers