Temple Complex

Why are the nations enraged?
When you tear down the DOW
flip the market upside down and say,
“This was supposed to be about prayer!”

How do the governments survive?
When the parasites filling up 
slick suits and nice ties—
pompous puppets—finally suck their people dry?

Where are the pretend priests—
the pastors and their staff protecting—
their teeth sunk deep, their bleeding-out sheep?
After all, a man’s gotta eat!

Can the gods among men,
even hear you when 
they kneel to crush? 
How can they hear you, if you can’t breathe?
Hands in their pockets, do they even care if you praise them?

Yet you, Good God and Shepherd, show 
to mend broken hearts with your own clothes
to walk with the weary through the shadow 
straight through to tomorrow.

Our sacred cows are slaughtered,
Lady Liberty led off in chains.
Left to choose between the narrow gait or Broadway,
we sit to entertain ourselves, (unfettered . . . unbothered).

Skyscrapers fuel the pyre.
Not one Yankee-doodle cobblestone unturned . . . unburned.
Hosanna, Hosanna! He comes with fire,
germinating his own empire,
fed by the tears of the crushed and perplexed
that profit and priest never saw,
fallen through the cracks of the temple complex.