If You Swallowed Poem by Patti Masterman

If you swallowed mainstream religion
Then, you are a trout-
Not a salmon, they swim free;
Swim upstream, from somewhere
They can't remember
And going, who knows where
They go in freedom; peace
And they return home again, to mate
But there are no other salmon there ranting at them
Shouting them down from from the riverbanks
That they're damned,
And that they were damned from the first moment
Of conception, in their mother's watery egg sac;
Or that they will be better, finer salmon
Than their doomed, atheistic neighbors
If they will tithe and sacrifice
Their first born, with rituals performed
In approximation of ancient blood sacrifice
Beneath the clear water, they do not fear
Nature and sex, as abhorrent and evil.

If you swallowed mainstream religion
You have the mark of the beast within you now;
And only by baptizing yourself
In the unmuddied currents of your own soul
And refusing ownership by anyone or anything else
Can you reclaim your honest, unsullied birthright;
Be the man you were meant to be,
Before you were taught the fear
Of everything that is beautiful, and natural, and right
Only man can take a pristine world and make it unpalatable
And then blame the whole world for his own astigmatism.