The Problem with Religion Is the People || Megan Hamilton

2

 

by Megan Hamilton


We became our own gods,

the divine man on the stage

with his microphone, a scalpel

dissecting a story to find his own answer.

 

We talk about service but come every Sunday

we revel in the labour of another,

our chairs laid out, our coffee poured, our kids watched,

yet we worship at the altar of our own sanctimony.

 

The women are silent,

gagged by cloths they’ve sewn

and food they’ve cooked,

an offering to the false gods at the pulpit.

 

Our sermons are about love

but only if our plasticine congregations

fit our heteronormative mould;

church is not a place for sinners.

 

We preach about honour but there is no honour

in worshipping the halo of gold on straight fingers,

a noose to the single and those we deem unworthy,

whose matrimony we declare unholy.

 

We stand on our pedestals, safe

from the raining judgment we pass on others,

while the poor and the hungry are soaked

as they bang on our closed church doors.

 

If our idea of religion is a white man

standing outside a church holding a Bible

and asking for peace, then we need to bear witness

to the tear-gassed people he assaulted to get there.

 

We have severely misunderstood

the religious imperative:

Love. One. Another.

Not love one another

 

Except

Except

Except.

 


Image Credit: beingathinkaholic.com



MEET THE POET:


Megan Hamilton (she/her) is a School Librarian from Bognor Regis, currently studying for her MA in Creative Writing. Her poems have been published in The Dawntreader, Sledgehammer Lit, Punk Noir Magazine, Goats Milk Magazine, Visual Verse and more. You can find her on Twitter @meganann1310.
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