“If Heaven ever sent a wheel of fire
screaming across the sky to kill the sun,
would it do any good to run like Hell?
Is there such a thing as a flame-retardant nun?
Would they find me hiding inside a well,
praying that Jesus somehow blows a tire?”
“I’ll profess this schism’s genesis: the Tire!
We Ford-produced The Mind and harnessed fire
to spark our blood’s plug. The Plot was developing well
until we divined ultraviolet rays from the sun
(clever enough to penetrate the habit of a nun).
By crowning the West, we erected Hell.”
“You Marxist bum! Your comrades duped you! Hell,
they shiver and huddle beside a burning tire.
And don’t guilt us with your cancer-stricken nun.
Maybe her tumor formed from years of fearing hellfire.
In fact, I’m loving all this extra sun.
With the right frame of mind, Man will live well.”
“A little well-to-do will do us well.
Good air Heaven … breathe out … Bad air Hell.
Feel the mystical soothing healing of the sun
pump you full of beams with a force that never tires.
Rapid breath now! Rapid breath now! Feel the fire
Flaming from the source, the All-Powerful None.”
“The last thing I thought I would be was a nun,
trust me, I’d always imagined my life would turn out, well,
like a torch-bearing punk bitch with poems to toss on the fire.
You know, drinking corn liquor, staging knife fights, raising Hell
above your head and heaving Satan’s storms for him, slashing tires
and flashing cops, holding orphans’ eyelids, making them stare at the sun.”
“If God were angry, would He spank His son,
or leave that ritual task to a nun?
I find Adam’s turtle beneath my car tire
and neither curse its name nor wish it well.
Besides, a turtle would never go to Hell;
it would smell lovely with its meat on fire.
None of us want to slave away in Hell,
but damned if I’ll climb from the well, or change Christ’s tire.
He can hurl me into fire; I’ve decided to worship the sun."