On a sunken Louisiana bank
Lies a sullen, sedate church
Ruined in fire
Where fire singed away the rain
And rains came down upon the ashes
Some vines plaster the flesh-wood
Now flesh as flesh decomposes
There’s blues on the wind
As Jon Wash leads his congregation
“Oh what a beautiful day”
He foretells smoke rings
Big as the sky
Dark like wet earth
Smoke enough to block the sun
And make us heavy in darkness
Guitar wind
Grimy blues, Jon sings
On the sullen church stoop
Overlooking a lagoon awash
With old particles of religion
There are old ways here, he says
Find no God in some big sky filled with smoke
Do not as foretold
Instead, dig yee fingers between the rotten floor
And find some worms beneath
Drinking the trickle-down nutrients of decomposition
That’s where the truth is
Digging deeper
There are ways older than God
Ways made up of the dark matter in your bones
That flew into you
As your soul was ripped from the nothingness
Into meat
Traces of heaven
Ones the pious cannot attain
So dig yourself deeper, he says
You are greater than the sum of your parts
But take the parts apart and divide them down instead
You are smaller but more wide
A greater net with horizontal throw
Each member dug
Digging themselves to bones
Digging the earth, or themselves
Or both, as former followed latter
Until each of their parts were laid bare
Blood, bone, skin, teeth
And they were their parts
Simpler than any god
But not older
Nor was dark matter found
They cried
Secrets still withheld
They asked
Why has suffering not bore fruit?
They stood in blood by the bayou and asked Jon Wash why
Why they had to break down themselves
If they could not crack a soul from marrow
But as they looked to the stoop
Jon Wash swung by a rain-bloated noose
And had for a long time
But not that long
Not as long as a God
Or the dark matter before