Heaven on Earth, America
by: Dana Stamps, II
“I don’t know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they
be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.”
– George H. W. Bush
The hardest thing about the Hell of it, dear Holy God,
was watching Sandro Botticelli trash his more
interesting secular paintings into the great blaze, the bonfire
of the vanities, an unparalleled public frenzy
of religious destruction, all in the name of Jesus Christ.
How many re-birth artifacts, ornate, priceless treasures
were lost to history like Alexandria’s vast library?
and Galileo’s sunny dignity; God, it was
like I was there with them at the burning, smashing
with a hammer my CD collection, destroying it
because Rock-n-Roll is evil, and somehow those diminished 5ths
were the Devil’s music, and I was a newly dedicated Christian,
born again, not a slave to my former Satanic pleasures,
then the philosopher Bruno was burned at the stake,
cruelly murdered by Christians, and Hypatia, too,
stripped naked, dragged through the streets to a church,
then butchered, her flesh scrapped to the bone
with oyster shells, her quivering limbs then thrown
into the flames!
then Lorenzo de Medici the Magnificent
was lying on his death bed, trembling, deeply concerned
for his salvation, fearful his Renaissance was not God’s will,
and that Hell Fire awaited him forever, and soon!
He called for the outspoken monk Girolamo Savonarola
to absolve him as monks are known to do
to dying men,
but condemned to damnation was the holy man’s lie,
how preachers often lie, like the selling of papal indulgences,
and declaring the date Matthew Shepard, a murdered
gay boy, entered Hell: they wrote it in stone. Even Leonardo
da Vinci, the genius, barely escaped death for this uncriminal crime.
Militant youths run the streets, enforcing Churchianity
on everyone, beating whores, murdering faggots, tearing
down nude art and burning it with books. Michelangelo’s
statue of David
broken, inhuman victories – things Godly
men do forbid like Sin-soreship, and Torquemada had tortured
as many unfundamentalists as there are being alive today
supposedly elected Mr. President.
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