The Atheist

Don’t sit and tell me about how I’m going to hell
I can see it in your eyes, you think I’m some sort of angel that fell
Yes, I was Catholic.
Yes, I was baptized.
Yes; I used to pray ever night, begging the lord to shield my family and I from the bad guys
I’d close my eyes real tight and beg God to keep my family shielded by light.
Every day I’d wake up and everyone would be fine
So surprise, surprise!  I believed in the divine!
Jesus was my maker, my savior, my neighbor
But like my father says about my politics, I found out he only makes sense on paper
And when I entered the third grade his presence was pretty goddamn vacant
Instead of making sure his children were protected by a shining light
My brother ended up in a mass of tangled metal from a jumble of traffic lights
We pray for God to protect us and keep us safe
Maybe he just doesn’t give a shit, maybe he was late
All I know is that my brother is dead and others are dying too
Yet still I’m supposed to say “You’ve always been there for me, thank you”
Took me a while to realize but now that I’ve come to terms with it it’s like I’m finally alive
Seeing the hearse has made me abandon the church
Praying helped my mother but it only made MY pain worse
I wish my mother would be able to understand why I feel the way I do
I wish my mother wouldn’t have cried and slammed her hands onto the table
“Why do you turn away from Him when you need him the most?”
Mom please understand I just don’t believe in ghosts, even if they’re holy
“That’s right you believe in nothing, to you everything is just a pointless story”
But I believe in humans, civic virtue and the idea of achieving glory
Good works, charity and loving your fellow man
Isn’t that something to be proud of?
I can be good without god if a bishop can be a pedophile with his assistance
I just can’t stand that for some reason I’m looked at as less moral
When your holy books approve stoning a girl for loving another girl
Pick and choose what you like, hell it’s what I’m doing
You keep to your beliefs to yourself and I’ll just keep on moving
Unlike evangelists, I won’t tell you what I think unless you ask me
Unlike televangelists, I won’t try to present you some double-sided bullshit catastrophe
Understand that we both have differences and maybe we can live in harmony