Element of Quasi Religion

Smoky white cloud emerging from below
into a blue sky, is how it appears.
Although starts on horizon, or seems so,
then, upward, the gentle billowing steers.

Like what comes from a devastating fire.
Cloud-form, I mean, not the dirty grey-black.
This cloud as if from unpolluting pyre.
An angel to heaven; on its way back.

Darker raincloud, too, is higher above.
It takes-up a great amount of the sky.
Central grey hue. Just surround, the white fluff.
A rejected angel about to cry?

Sun’s fiendish yellow from behind does show.
Is it vetting the angels as they go?

I confess I did not know confession,
the Catholic ritual of forgiveness.
Held often in church closed booths, the sessions.
Guilty secrets absolved in way that’s ‘just’.

Priest listening, delegated by God
to wash away mortal sins admitted.
Dissolves one or two of them, or a lot.
Unburdening, by this is permitted.

But now I’m told it is conditional.
Must commit not to repeat, intrusion.
Habitual thoughts and deeds, though, typical.
If can’t promise, denied absolution.

That strikes me as potentially unfair,
and leaves a person to live with despair.

Baby born in a barn amongst the beasts,
the summary of the nativity.
Symbolises hope for the world, at least.
More, if religious sensitivity.

Realise, though, those beasts too, symbolic.
They’re a metaphor for other humans.
The asses with limitation chronic.
The goats tethered so not be a nuisance.

Maybe an odd sheep or two wandered in.
All making due with their basic heating.
A swaddling cloth, the new born wrapped up in.
Some star-guided travellers visiting.

All what followed, endlessly told by priests.
Some of us, though, as benign as the beasts.

“God cannot be everywhere, Mister”.
“I know. That’s why he created mothers”.
Amusing lines in Hindi film, sister.
But is it because God can’t be bothered;

so delegates the caring role to girls,
whilst he, the father, gets on with his work,
like plagues and wars inflicted on the world.
Caring responsibility, he shirks.

But if care important, as it should be,
then mothers, and the like, are goddesses.
And in more places than God, seemingly.
Act themselves, not by his good offices.

The myth, then, a form of privatising,
where God ‘profits’ whilst does next to nothing.

Yes, ‘die’. Die will be done. Die will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven. Heaven?
Would mean eternal existence, is none.
That, then, be something with which to reckon.

Of course, with such religion to start with.
One that believes there is life after death.
Enduring faith for that is the belief.
Any other version cannot accept.

Heaven, a myth though. A comforting thought.
So too, God. Everlasting potentate.
To everyone’s life, here, death is brought.
A heavenly survival, some create.

God dies … that is us … and that is the end.
Would be awful if had to die again.

Execution of a troublesome priest.
A silencing. Silence from that quarter.
By accusation, corruption released.
Protest have less impetus to alter.

But there comes the impact of martyrdom.
A strengthening of realisation
that right, in the effort to overcome.
And repression, just intimidation.

What the righteous one sought, not gone away.
An increase in followers; disciples.
Covert, at first, then through open display.
Have their own truth, which tell in their bibles.

Soon powerful. Risk of insurrection.
Allow, accord, later interventions.

It is a failure of modernity,
the takeover by the medieval.
Have shiny metal, deadly weaponry.
Always thought would banish the infidel.

Defeated, the occupiers, who left,
Leaving their home-grown allies to suffer.
Loss of lives, and maimings, had their effect.
Although, lot more of the zealot brother.

Girls’ education, now, to be curtailed.
Women’s role returned to subservience.
As part of the religious zeal avowed,
harsh, cruel, punishments from brutal judgments.

The ‘moderns’ lost the will to modernise.
‘Next war’, ‘own politics’, meant here they lied.

Vice and Virtue. What is vice? What virtue?
Seem opposite, and each thought obvious.
But what some believe, others not at all.
Arbitrarily imposed, ominous.

Freedom will most certainly be curtailed.
Women lose control over their bodies.
Minority ways to live, not allowed.
‘One size fits all’ for the authorities.

They think sex work, vice. Adultery, vice.
Abortion, vice. Gay relationships, vice.
Whatever father, husband wants, not vice
but virtue, even if not very nice,

like bullying, abuse or rape. A lot
that they think vice or virtue, I do not.

The religious fundamentalist view
of vice and virtue is early feudal.
Women restricted in what they can do.
Daughter, wife, mother, duties as virtue.

Performances, vice, like entertaining,
or in sports, where will be seen, her physique.
Also, describing what appertaining.
Her, controlled, and punishments should she speak.

Voicing injustices, or how she feels,
not just verbally, but in books or plays,
banned, censored, declared as vice and concealed.
Females as ‘challenging beings’ erased.

Such repression, most in the world revile.
A vice and virtue attitude that’s vile.

Wonderful doubt. I carry none of that.
Believing, or not altogether sure.
Do not need religion to watch my back.
I know what is in store for evermore.

May hallucinate. That is possible.
But only for a spasmodic moment.
Brain disorientated. That is all.
And then, force there is to forget, potent.

Wonderful doubt could describe mystery.
The soul of me goes on, in such versions.
Meeting with God, hopefully heavenly.
An out-of-body, and mind, excursion.

But know delusion. That’s what that’s about.
Non-existence is not wonderful doubt.