by Claire Scott

Seriously folks
If god is really running this world
Do you trust him to run the next
That paradise with twelve gates
To the city, wide enough for
aaaaaaaahallelujah
The one per cent to slip through
The CEOs of Google,
Amazon, GE, Monsanto,
JP Morgan, all wearing white
Robes of righteousness
aaaaaaaacome all ye faithful
Guarding against riff and raff
Sneaking into the inner sanctum
And sitting (god forbid!)
Near the Mercy Seat
The chosen archangels
Pillaging heaven’s sacred ground
Felling forests by the acre
Seeding clouds, polluting streams
Keeping the rest of us
Eating sulfurous soup
No daily bread in sight
For us lumpen losers
Living in creaky shacks far from
God’s lavish McMansions
Zoos rivaling Noah’s ark
Golf courses without
Sand traps, perfect scores
Every time
Seraphim serenading
Battle hymns of success
aaaaaaaamine eyes have seen the glory
While the rest of us hear only
The incessant drone of angels
Driving us nuts
aaaaaaaaholy, holy, holy
Shut up already
Days and nights identical
In incessant light
Moving rocks like Sisyphus
Grinding into eternity
No minimum wage
No water
God’s grace nowhere in sight

I’ll take my chance with
Worms in a black pit

Claire Scott is an award winning poet who has published in a number of literary magazines. She was recently nominated for the 2014 Pushcart Prize. Claire is a winner of the Arizona State Poetry Society 2013 Annual Poetry Contest. She has published in Trivia, Write Wing, Stepping Stones, Epiphany, Organs of Vision and Speech, Red Savina Review, Writers Tribe Review, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Common Threads, Poydras Review, First Day and Sanskrit among others. Her forthcoming first collection of poems, Waiting to be Called, will be published by IF SF Press in the fall of 2014. Claire is a Marriage and Family Therapist with a private practice in Berkeley, CA.