New Spiritual Life
I The Old Gods
The old Gods are dusty.
In their niches and corners
They glower, impotent,
Until someone declutters
And takes them down
To the auction room
Or the car boot sale
To see if they are worth anything.
There is no longer mystery
In their familiar wooden faces.
When the light is turned on
The shadows retreat into cupboards
And under the beds with the dust.
How can transcendence come
From a dull wooden figure
That can’t even cure a headache?
Take a headache pill like Advil:
Emerald green stained glass,
Glistening in your palm.
On the tongue it is transubstantiated,
A cure you do not need to understand.
There are others, wiser men, who know
The arcana of the laboratory but, for you,
This miracle costs just fifteen cents.
II Consumer Religion
Captured by the calendar,
The world rotates.
Each season brings its own
Routine. The dates,
Removed from holy saints
Are commandeered
And redirected by new owners,
Guided, steered
To new intents. St Nicholas,
No longer in a church,
Is in the magic grotto.
You can search
For cards and gifts
For valentines.
And Mothering Sunday
Is the time
For florists to rejoice.
Gather near,
Salesmen. Retailers
Be of good cheer.
Offers, counter-offers topping
’tis the season to be shopping
Merchants trading gross and margin
Shoppers searching for a bargain
Mingle in the joy of spending
Credit that is never ending
Let us arise and go now.
Let’s go down to the mall,
Where strange delights from east and west
Are on display for all.
Gleaming mounds of kitchen ware,
And trays of fresh baked bread,
Shining plastic shopping bags,
In pink and blue and red.
Give us new suits, new shoes, new looks.
Sell us designer lives,
New houses, furniture and cars
New children, husbands, wives.
Let us become the image on
The television screen.
Make us perfect as the ads in
The glossy magazine.
And when we struggle home again
Encumbered by the spoils
Of the perfect shopping mission,
Reward of all our toils,
Then we think we’ll be made happy
By things that we don’t need.
Or else it seems that, just perhaps,
These acquisitions lead
To a way out, an escape route,
A heaven here below,
Where we can live like movie stars
And share the joys they know.
III The Eclectics
Voodoo child
With the skull on the stick,
The shrunken head
With just a few grey hairs.
In the robes of an
Egyptian priest,
A tilak on your forehead,
the Torah in your hand.
Last survivor of
the ten lost tribes
You wander in a hall
of mirrors
Searching for the door.
Seeking to open
the final mysteries
Of where you come from
And where your thoughts go
When your brain has died.
IV In The Gallery
The objects you will see today
Are taken from the normal world
And placed here;
They are given new contexts,
Evocations, linkages,
Connections to memories
And strange imaginings.
They awaken dreams and visions
And nightmares.
This art makes no statements
Just allusions to the mysteries beyond.
Pilgrims have come
To see a miracle;
To partake of a vision of
Another world,
To participate vicariously
In a revelation.
They worship at an altar
Of everyday objects
Sanctified by
The hands of the artists;
Reaching out beyond their
Ordinary lives.
V The Street Market
L Ron Hubbard is dead
He died in 1986
But in Times Square
You can still have
Your stress assessed.
A simple test
For a technological age,
An elegant combination
Of psychoanalysis and skin resistance.
Liberation for the soul
From the bonds of time
And age
And gravity.
I would have liked to ask him
If it is possible
For you, yourself, to believe
In a religion you’ve invented.
But L Ron Hubbard is dead.
VI Postscript:
Of course, some retain a traditional faith.
The believers are putting each other to death.
A thousand years on, and nothing has changed
A bloody crusade can still be arranged.
The fanatics, still, are so dangerously right
That they’ll rape, burn and kill to show us the light.
Those old-time religions still offer a role,
Set things on fire, and capture the soul.
Adding your comment:
but I read through it all though, only thing is that I lost interest a bit...
very good use of imagery in there 
There is some really stunning imagery in this. I'd like to see you perhaps play around with line-break choice, but otherwise, I find it to be quite captivating. Thanks for entering it!
'...To participate vicariously In a revelation. They worship at an altar Of everyday objects Sanctified by The hands of the artists; Reaching out beyond their Ordinary lives...' It is often a Poet's task to help reveal the humanity in the rest of the world...You've done well at that in this penning...It's a wonderful offering to us all, laden with exquisite imagery & a grand command of language...& it says much about your inner Spirit, as well...Thank you for sharing this with the rest of us...Be well, Poet...
Wanda
) and the postscript's brutal truth is striking. loved reading it
To me your poem shows that religions have changed over the years in some ways in some ways not. It is still about the same thing no matter what it is called or when. It is about looking for something. Be it guidance or comfort or happiness or what ever makes you happy. To me you have showed this in many different ways in the different parts of your poem. You really got me thinking with this one! signs of a good poem in my book! Thanks for sharing it with us!
