The Church

The church filled up slowly with lies.
The stained glass windows were the first to go;
they became as night, though the sun still shone,
halos turned blood red and ran with sweat on stone,
dripped and tumbled into choir-boys' mouths as they sang.
Airborne, it spread, a dense desire
dancing on tongues; salt that popped like candy,
ascending ejaculates of amen spittling the air,
forming a fog that flagellated eyes to tears.
Humidity heightened, tightening collars and causing
clothes to cling to skin; people shrunk to fit them.
The stars and moon circled for two millennia above,
and still the lies flowed down walls and pews undammed,
a Great Flood rising to knees, to waists and necks,
siphoning through the cracks between the doors
to fill the outside world.
But on the 39th day there was a miracle;
the church doors opened and the lies flowed out,
bodies of the drowned floating on the tsunami,
children sputtering for air with their hair
plastered to their ears; inside, so much damage
had rotted the walls, the pews, the cross and crown of thorns.