Oh Lord, Give Me Not a Simple Prayer

Why do people want a “simple prayer”?

Give me long and complex rituals!

Neither do any good,

but, like solving a Rubic’s cube

offers no answers

but is a fun challenge

(until you get bored with it),

a complex ritual is fun

(until you get bored with it, too).

 

Give me the complex prayer,

one I have to cross myself

seven times and climb up a tower

and say it backwards,

first in a language

I do not speak

and then in English!

 

Oh Lord, Give Me Not a Simple Prayer

 

Instead,

like a mythical Bitcoin,

let me unearth it through

strange and mysterious “mining”

until I find my own golden heaven,

where I will learn

to walk on clouds paved with gold

and to stay within

the great high wrought iron fence

 

which serves two purposes.

first, to keep all the unsaintly folks

from intermingling with us good people,

and second to keep us saints

from wandering off the cloud

reservation we call heaven:

 

dios este día el pan nos da

da nobis hodie

For God knows

I so loved the bread

I offer up my body to diabetes