A Southern Gospel... (Part Two) Poem by Eric Cockrell

he lay still on the floor,
wrestling with the darkness.
his life flooded his senses,
and the lives of all others!
he stood again by his mother's
grave... felt again that emptiness.
and the first time he'd ever been in love,
the softness of her skin, the gentleness
in her eyes. the way her lips tasted
when they kissed, the way her body
felt beneath his... the eternal sadness
in her voice when she said goodbye!
the birth of his children, the house and
the home... the same 8 hour shift, year
after year...
the day they announced the layoffs, the plant
shutting down... the day the unemployment
ran out...
times of war, acts of courage, and murder that
bruised his conscience.
the taste of whiskey, corner tables in lonesome
bars... the homeless streets, the thugs, heroin stoops,
and jail cells....
if god wasnt dead, well... maybe he was!
maybe that was it, maybe he'd been dead for
a long time...
sometimes hunger was the only way he'd known
he was real...
that, and the smells, the tastes, the touching...
hell, if he had to do it again, he'd do it even harder!



he lay shaking on the floor, tears rolling down
his face, the taste of blood on his lips...
thinking... maybe this is god, the hurting,
the memories, dirty hands and tired feet...
and lapsed naked into salvation without a name!

the next morning, the custodian found a dead
body beneath the altar... he called 911...
and the preacher he'll preach next sunday on
heaven and hell... never knowing, never realizing,
they'd lain there at the foot of the altar!
the true religion, the life and death of a common man!