CONFESSION FOR WORLD RELIGIONS

I gazed at the divine and discovered nailed supports banged in incompetent haste of ego feasts, personal agendas relapsed to heal broken dreams of adolescence.

I wandered under hallowed steps and gates and railings, to peek at mysterious mirrors and smoke and doors and panels, secret passwords known only to the converted, convinced, ordained and initiated.

I watched the sacred and looked at your eyes and hands creating my world and calling it good.

I wandered into the mysterium tremendum power centers of my neighbors' wish list and found familiar daydreams and common fantasies;

I peeked behind torn curtains into consecrated altar of sacrificed selves hung as soiled vestments, uniforms, costumes, apparel, raiment, faith fashions;

I crept unto the holiest of grounds, treading on thin membranes, finding stacks of rotting words, decayed paragraphs of solemn absolutes, crumbling cakes of insightful truths.

I blew gathered holy dust to uncover faded, scratched signals from ourselves. I peered at The high sacred, discovered answers to find my own eyes, blink-less and focused from cracked, crinkled, wrinkled, shoddy, distorted reflectors made in haste,

Staring back with warnings, threats, blackmail, intimidations, accusations, pronouncements, creeds, confessions, edicts, proclamations, verdicts, judgments, secrets, diagnoses, prognoses, maledictions, invocations, magic formulas, curses, promises by the barrel

Gush forth from the mirror to give drink to flooded earth, saturate saturated ground, inundate inundated gardens, drowning hopes, destroying bridges and parks, sinking into sacred whirlpools of religious certainties,

Leaving thirsty, hungry, lost laborers at war in the temple over divine, holy, sacred, blessed, hallowed, eternal, absolute, saving, unifying, freeing, peace-filled universal truth.

Richard E. Lake