I remember Sunday mornings
Grandma coming up the stairs
singing church songs
of how much she loves Jesus
Christ.
I never understood why she had to
get up so early
make so much noise in the house,
doing things she could have done
when she got back from church.
Leaving church
then had to rush home, cook the
chicken already seasoned from the night before.
Getting shouted at to watch the
pot while it simmer,
then rushing to get the door for
aunts and uncles who would come for dinner.
There was always noisy little
cousins running around
Drunk uncles drinking rum in the
living room,
even though it was only 4 o’clock
in the afternoon.
I remember my first Sunday
without Christ. No need to get up early
put on Sundays best.
Comb my hair properly and wear a
nice pretty dress,
that I always use to press
the night before
and hang it up by the door.
I had considered myself
enlightened,
from the generations of lies
presented to me as facts.
Carefully built walls, around
imprisoned souls of my mother
before me,
and my grandmother
before
her.
But life had shattered.
The truths of my existence were
now falsified.
Searching wherein for other
truths, trying to discern the lies.
For I had rejected the Bible as
truth,
but still looked to the
omnipresent to explain my roots.
Since the very moment of
consciousness
humankind have been searching for
where we come from,
desperately trying to find
somewhere to belong.
Have looked at the stars and
tried to make sense of what we saw.
Then Marx came along and declared
religion to be like opium.
Not the disease, but merely a
symptom.
An expression of the material
realities of the economically oppressed
used to make the exploited poor
feel better about their distress.
They hang salvation in your face,
make you sing to the heavens
“free at last”
not knowing redemption comes at a
cost.
Like drug dealers dangle
crack to a mother,
so the authority offer Jesus
Christ on a platter.
So long gone are the days of
Sunday best
You can tell God this
Sunday is my day
of rest.
