salt lake city 1973

mormon's are everwhere

battalions of bicycling bachelors

with dark suits

and well cropped hair

we're mormons too

have been since '72

i'm riding between my brother and sister

in the back seat of a '67 buick station wagon

with red vinyl seats

we stick by each other

and to those seats

we've been eating cheese and bacon sandwiches

our mother made for thirteen days straight in the august heat

and both my siblings are wakin' on those eggshells

as i will soon learn how to do myself

they play their quiet silly games

with their peashooters

as i sip luke-warm sprite from a tin can

sold to me by a hunchback silly bastard old woman

a hundred miles back

who is probably the only person with good sense

in this part of the country

i still don't know what to do god-awful bacon and cheese sandwich

but your body is your temple

god tells us so

so drink up your milk

and reap what you sow

i mold the cheese and bacon sandwich into a ball in my hand

it kind of reminds me of play-dough

i look around to see who is watchin'

and stuff it between the red vinyl seats

no one will find it

at least not for a couple of weeks

we're in this big place now

it's kind of like 1/2 of an blue plastic easter egg shell

and there's a hole in the top

where the sun cuts through

and lights up the room

and i hear all these male voices

telling me that black people are inferior

and it's ok to have more than one wife

and as the dry dry breath of the utah sun warms me

i stand before a statue of jesus that is far too big

and has held these folks hostage for so so long

and i gaze up at the nostrils of the sandstone savior

and wonder if it

can smell all this bullshit

cause i sure can

and i'm only 5 years old

in salt lake city

in 1973.