Alan Bender - Click Start to Logout

Riding past a Lutheran cemetery yesterday
right across the road from a Catholic one,
I got to thinking, are they still members there?
How about the other sects or heathens
Do the dead have to finally make a choice
Are there agent saints that force them to be
Lutherans or Catholics? Maybe that is how
crematoriums get their business— a 3rd way—
Picture the signs on the road to the pearly gates:

With wine (tastes great)
Without wine (less filling)
Fire water/hold the water
We only sell the best in promises,
no destination guarantees or refunds,
decisions of the judge are final.

Kind of like greed in the crap shoot of life
Only here when your number comes up someone else wins
Grave maker, undertaker, bone shaker
Counting on remorse to shame survivors
Pay the toll to get past the gate to claim their estate

The dead they got no choice except L, C or O
the way it looked to me as a passerby
at the cemetery on the road
where I rode,
opposite the arrows painted on the highway,
back to life in a small town
where church steeples are the high points
behind elevators.

Alan Bender

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