I was walking in Chicago recently And I saw a man sitting in a fold out lawn chair
He was all scruffled up like a scurvy furby Tightly fixtured, but a little bit swervy Cardboard box draped over his shoulders Plastered with the words: The End is Neigh I’m pretty sure he meant to write the end is nigh But who am I to judge, maybe he just hates horses And so, this man, just sat there, with a bell in his right hand And a black cross painted on his forehead Shivering from the cold, but convulsing with fear Over what? I’m not entirely sure.
‘Cause I never really connected with religion None of it really made much sense to me I mean I had options I could have a BBQ with Buddha Or a Mixer with Moses I could have Lord Shiva on speed dial And I could have Allah in my Google plus circle
But despite all that, I can’t help but look up and say Dang dude, that crap’s just too damn mainstream ‘Cause I don’t know if you've noticed But I’m so dang hipster That when that tree fell in the forest And no one was there to hear it I got that jam on vinyl
So I have a new plan I am going to craft my own religion And it’s gonna be like no other
In my religion, we’ll have churches No no no, we’ll have sacred jazz clubs And every Sunday will be an open mic night And people can preach the brassy gold of Louis Armstrong Or the sweet, subtle scriptures of Ella Fitzgerald And poetry will be read from war veterans fresh off the line And criminals who seek a fresh start And little middle schoolers who tiptoe into the glow of the halogen light Their little hand shaking as if they were handed a sword rather than a microphone And then nervously reading their love poem they wrote for the cute girl in English class
Will my religion have a deity? You bet your spray tanned butt it will But it won’t be a person With tiny little strings tied to its fingers Like little omniscient yo-yo’s No, it’ll be much greater than that It’ll be an idea, it’ll be multiple ideas Like paint thrown at a canvas in a contemporary art museum My God, is the doctor who beat my uncle’s cancer into remission My God, is watching my mother breathe life Into a limp unconscious boy Pulled out of my neighbor’s swimming pool My God, it the woman who placed a flower on a bayonet pointed at her head In an act so pure and forgiving, That it would be treason to call it protest My God, can give hope to a sinner with not a single line of prose And sorry to one-up you, Jesus But My God can totally walk on Legos
My religion will go door to door asking people to go sledding with them But asking them to bring earmuffs and mittens ‘Cause baby it’s cold outside My religion will kinda stray away from Gay Pride parades But not because it hates love But because cowboy boots and short shorts are sooo 2009 And when the thought-locked homophobes and haters come to town You can be sure as hell that my religion will stand in a barrier And say, my friend, the heart acts in mysterious ways, I’ll admit But I don’t need to be a Hallmark card to know what love is when I see it
Because lately, Life’s a burning, blunting, cyclical spell Like for heaven, ignore for hell Swooning, grunting, pushing, crying, Ripping, melting, grueling, dying We live in a world where words fade out under a cloud of short hand abbreviation Burning bridges and equating insanity with wonder and deviation We tie gags and nooses around ideas and dreams And objectify death on an old television screen But I accept my insanity To think that race is an illusion to make ourselves feel unique To think that good is evil and evil is good and we simply fear to hear the gray-scale speak I believe that failure is beautiful I think that ignorance is demise I know that every conflict in this world can be cured if someone had the courage to put down their rifle and just apologize.
There’s a lot that I can’t do though I can’t get rid of Justin Bieber I can’t fix wobbly tables I can’t help you chase the cute girl in English class And I can’t fix every keyboard with one of its feet missing Sometimes, this world is painful to live in I know it’s hard to breathe, but smog can go away When you have enough people fanning at it. And that’s the reason we’re here There are 170 billion galaxies in the observable universe Stretching out 13.8 billion light years But for now, this world, this dimly lit speck, It’s all we've got. So take that stupid cardboard sign off your shoulders And go build a pillow fort With everyone on the block Because the end isn't Neigh And we’re going to need a lot of pillows.
