Cherries

make it pretty, make it rhyme

make it comfortable all the time.

don’t you dare have the audacity

to suggest you have the right to be

outside our ideology:

we wear symbols,

and love to preach,

judge you for what we implore you to do:

“Expel and purge” in a flowery way

and for you we’ll say we pray

But if you dare to make it real,

show us things that don’t appeal

to our regurgitated pedestrian values,

we’ll shove you, face-down, into the shallows.

Exploit your suffering in the name of Christ,

tell you that your pain’s not nice.

We lift our crosses and claim to be

much more holy, better than thee,

and cherry-pick the scripture tree.