Running Sideways Up The Slope Poem by Gary Diamond

That's life in a nutshell.
Doing stupid things to get the laughs
To get the money, and the women
The damaged goods, the fools in flight
All of those that need to repent.

Who sinned, and who's to say he wasn't holy by his own terms?
Why say organised religion demands total devotion
When those who preach in draughty pulpits desecrate the flesh of children?
How can a mass murderer on his day in the chair
Or his day under the needle of death
Say he really regrets any of the killings he has done?

The underlying questions of this curious human nature is what I preach.
Except these are still dirty taboo secrets you don't want to hear.
You know they're here
You deny me the right to speak them
Because I speak them in tones that do not waver
Because I have admitted and made my bed with
Complete failure in mind.

I have seen the light
It's the one over my body of formaldehyde
I swear I've seen all my near-deaths
Days before they happened.
I walked towards them with open arms
And a smug smile.
That's why I never broke a bone.
But as repentance
When I die, every bone will be broken in the fall.

On that day, I'll be running sideways up the slope
I'll be in love with hate and bound in rope
I'll be completely free because I'll have the closure
I spent my life trying to fabricate.
There's no fooling the cosmos, you know.