My God, My World
Ben Boruff
I like to spend my time on long car rides
repurposing pop lyrics
as evangelical sermons
imagining every “baby” in a manger
and every “I love you” as a prayer.
my Synthpop God
pulsing under my skin
to the beats of top-charted idols
tempts me to worship,
tells me to clap my hands together
and pray.
There are moments
when the moonlight makes silhouettes of trees
and my headlights cut through the dark
and the thump of the radio shakes my hands
as if beating them clean of sin
that I wonder why churches don’t hold services
in concert halls and theaters
under neon
without proselytizing or liturgy
but with beats
and lights.
Then I remember that they do.
And suddenly my Bass Drum God
seems cheapened by tradition.
Ben Boruff is a high school English teacher who writes comic reviews (Comic Bastards and Impulse Gamer), pop culture analysis (Big B and Mo Money), and poetry. Ben participated in Chicagoland’s 2016 This Is My Brave storytelling event to combat the stigmas surrounding mental illness, and he encourages everyone to fight stigmas, prejudice, and ignorance by sharing stories.
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