Cobbler’s Faiths

Their cobbled religions
put together
from old songs half remembered
stray parental advice
advertising scripts
movie scenes
observations made upon losing virginity
every episode of favored cartoons
lines grabbed from books
sniffed out at yard sales
or learned from peers
better versed in cool
rare T-shirts
and well-shouted poems
seem as valid
as anything put together
by committees of old men
staring suspiciously at past wisdom
scrapping over papyrus and parchment
and vellum
with an eye toward
power

each seems to offer
as much comfort
as the other

and all seem to me
just as distant
from my own God

the Clockmaker
who long ago turned
the Holy Mechanism on
made me a cog
and stepped away
to let me learn the secrets of time
and motion for myself
as I mesh with All
and work in tandem
to bring All
forward