Cult
The cult bought the old Rickert place
and moved in down the road.
They cut down the scrub oak and all
the snowghost sandplums,
brought crawling earth movers with crocodile feet
smashed things flat and built three religion boxes.
Then they planted
baby trees.
They died last summer.
I doubt they’re doing any better
inside.
March 2011
Posted for Friday Flash 55 at the G-man's
Image: US Navy Military Grader, courtesy wikimedia commons
Geez Hedgewitch....
ReplyDeleteA real 'Feel-Good Fifty-Five' this week eh?
Hahahahaha Thats OK, I Like em ALL!!
Yours was Fantastic and dark!
Thanks for playing, and have a Kick Ass Week-End!
Hi it's me again, it seems that I forgot my....
ReplyDeleteYAHTZEE!!!!!
Thank you very much......G
Any time. Just enact your strange rituals here whenever....and dark? hey, try living next door to them, then we'll talk.
ReplyDeleteReligion is so strange. I don't trust it at all.
ReplyDeletei hear the koolaid is good...and by now they are in the wake of the comet...smiles...
ReplyDeleteI doubt it either.
ReplyDeleteloved your message.
ReplyDeleteWell Done 55.
I never understand the cutting trees down.
ReplyDeleteNor religion boxes that keep people inside.
Yikes.
I bet you'll have more tales to tell on this.
xo
baby don't fear the earth mover.
ReplyDeleteer, reaper.
blue oyster cult.
nebber mind!
Hmmm. I firmly believe that TOO much of ANYTHING is too much. But maybe that's just me...
ReplyDeleteBeauty is removed, new life flattened
ReplyDeleteAnd people put in a box
Nice 55
That was a punch to the gut. There are at least a half-dozen poems in it; so many ways to read it. A cult can be so many things...
ReplyDeleteHa! Sounds like the church-goin' family with 2.5 kids and beemers who built the McMansion and moved-in down the road. I don't trust 'em.
ReplyDeleteWe
ReplyDeleteAin't
Comin'
Out
wacko's
Peace, hp
well said.
ReplyDeleteIt is such a fascinating thing how a cult leader can "recruit" people, control them, take advantage of them and somehow make them feel as though they're part of a family. And now I'm wondering how else it's similar to the corporate culture...
ReplyDeleteAs you know, I disparage tiny verse corsets -- what can you say in so little space -- but you show here how much power can pump into one fist. The big news was the razoring of a landscape to build "three religion boxes." The bigger news, somehow, is "I doubt they're doing any better/inside," which suggests that religion -- these cultists, anyway -- builds little coffins for eternity and then shuts the real world out (after cutting it down). Little claustrophobic insides of Heaven to prophylactic against fallen Gaia. You feel sorry for 'em. -- Brendan
ReplyDeleteNothing can grow where it ain't truly loved!
ReplyDeletejust sayin'...
Send 'em here. We have slums enough for any and all to do what they want, knock down what they want, plant what won't grow and worship whatever god they got on their soul staining it.
ReplyDeleteThanks all. This is an internet cult, massively rich, and they do intimidate and frighten me with the scope of their enterprise, out here in the sticks where few in RL actually see them.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, there are so many kinds of cults, many of them having nothing to do with what we normally think of as religion, that it's easy to use this as a metaphor.
Creepy...and has the ring of truth, hedgewitch...
ReplyDeletedo they all have their nike sneakers?
ReplyDeleteoh shit! i had such hope for the cult. truly. i'm saddened. perhaps they shouldn't have started with boxes. they should barely have gotten to the planting.
ReplyDeletewonderfully succinct. it walloped me.
(hi you. i've been learning of you through brendan's)
xo
erin
@erin-- thank you and glad you liked. Love your work--read it every day and it seldom fails to amaze me, (also via Brendan's.)
ReplyDelete@lime I think it's Florsheim's, actually.
@Brendan Forgot to slide in that you perfectly got exactly what I was driving at. (And verse corsets fit some better than others, especially those that are trying to keep from over-jiggling.)
ReplyDeleteNot the kind of place I would want to be.
ReplyDelete- Alice
My second favorite 55 offering in this set - the other is from Stranger, Just Like Heaven.
ReplyDeleteWish I'd written this, one of the highest/sincerest praises I can offer.
"Religion boxes." Oh, yeah.
ReplyDeletePowerful stuff. I like it.
ReplyDeleteI like it too!
ReplyDeleteHere is mine:
homing