NaPoWriMo Bonus Post #4

[sandbagging: this is more (stereo)typically "slammish" than I usually write, but you have to have variety - and with any luck, there's some nuance in the position presented here]

A reading from the book of Mendeleev

I don't know any snakes looking skyward

for explanations of their vestigial legs

Nor any whales who, surfacing,

blowhole prayers regarding their horselike hips

And while I know a few primates

who crack brachiating arms across their chests

and insist they are not related to apes

My appendix remains confused

by hymnals

and my full set of ribs

resonates soundly with this verse

My brothers and sisters,

My god, if such exists, did not make me in his image

Because if I am in the image of God,

then God is a more ideal version of me

and based on humanity's track record,

my god, my God is the scariest motherfucker in existence

My god, if such exists, does not lie

in the sterility of dogma,

did not create and is not interested in

perfection

My god, if such exists, is not

in the insoluble words of a book

but in the decaying of its pages,

the echo of voices not reciting

but renewing

My god, if such exists, did not plan

the oak tree, but thrives in photosynthesis

My god, if such exists, rides the spectrum

which includes male and female,

knowing it's not just frogs and fish

who sometimes need to change sex

My god, if such exists, is the blooming

but not the bloom,

the exploding

but not the explosion

My god, if such exists, is all verb,

ill-defined, beyond boxes

textual or ideological,

is perhaps only in my head,

is perhaps everywhere,

meaning nowhere,

meaning everywhere,

is paradoxical,

unowned,

not beautiful

but beautifying,

not dead

but dying,

not risen

but rising

Is quantum, knowing everything

you could possibly do at any instant

but leaving the choice up to you

and so does not wonder

why anyone would reject history, knowledge,

a chance to improve

In some version of this world,

we don't

In some, we do