Silence

I can't hear you.

Your high ceiling chapels capture

voicings: choirs, prayers,

sermons—do these snake-oil salesmen speak for you?

They pocket tithes tax free,

and drive cherry red porches back to beachfront properties.

Meanwhile, I can't hear you.

They say a relationship with you should be personal,

but I get hung up ontological hiccups.

I want what's true for me to be true for everybody.

Can something so cosmic be a matter of opinion?

I prefer the scientific method: determining objective facts by checking each other's math,

but were you only ever subjective, the frontal lobe

in conversation with itself?

Besides, if I heard your voice when no one else could,

would that just make me crazy?

Regardless, I still can't hear you.

You're a disappointment:

a deadbeat dad who never shows up for his kids.

I can't hear you, asshole.

What do you think about climate change?

What do you think about genocide?

What do you think about world leaders starting wars to distract the public from allegations of rape and pedophilia?

Speak up, coward. Silence is complicity.

Or are you just weak? Does all that talk of omniscience amount to empty bluster?

I can't hear you.

Is this blasphemy? Am I tempting your wrath?

Good.

Maybe if you get angry you'll have something to say.

But I can't hear you.

Maybe you're just too far away.

Are we shouting across a chasm at each other,

incapable of reading lips and long-distance symbols?

Have you been talking to yourself this whole time?

I can't hear you.

I'm starting to think no one can.