It’s Like This

The prayers of non-believers are beautiful like women

desperate to be beautiful are beautiful, but beautiful

in a way that makes God sick a bit like one too many

petit fours. God’s also turned off by the prayers

of believers. They’re sweaty and overwrought,

not like stalkers but like window peekers, who tend

toward introversion and stuttering, did you know that?

I once cured a window peeker by setting him up with some

speech therapy. God doesn’t even go that far. God’s thing

is go ahead and set up your own speech therapy.

God doesn’t like crowds or cuddling and hates gifts,

which end up stranding the recipient in the Desert

of Endless Gratitude. Begging God doesn’t work.

I know begging doesn’t work. If it worked, I wouldn’t be

so sad. In fact, if you beg, you’re sunk. Ask Gerard

Manley Hopkins. Ask Skinny Neckvessel, one of those

fat guys on whom bullies hung a fatal nickname. I tried

doing some research on the surname Neckvessel

and all I got was info on carotid artery disease.

How would you like to be Skinny Neckvessel,

even for a day, a guy who had to enter the door

of his own house sideways, a guy so fat that his only

comfort was three TV dinners and a Mrs. Smith’s

Dutch Apple Pie. God’s point of view is that being God

is a lot like being Skinny Neckvessel, that is, really large

and really uncomfortable and filled with bitterness

and filled with pie. Not to mention that Skinny

Neckvessel was shot and killed for cheating at cards

in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Huge and far from home

and right between the eyes, that’s God’s point of view.