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Who Knows Why

Mom and Pop slapped little Jesus
on the side of the head and said
"We're gonna give you morals whether you like it or not."
So they took him to church and made him sit for hours listening to a man
with big teeth
tell everyone what bad people they were.

Every night for months he had horrible dreams of people screaming in
pain and little boys burning in bathtubs full of oil for lying about
stealing cookies from Grandma's jar.
And once he made the mistake of sneaking a puff of one of Pop's cigars
in the back of the garage, but Mom smelled it and told Pop.
Pop was so mad he washed the boy's mouth out with soap three times and
made him sleep in the cold basement without a blanket.

When he was 15, his parents kicked him out of the house when they found
out he was seeing a black girl from the trailer park.
From then on, he just roamed the streets, drinking wine and associating
with people of ill repute and Mom and Pop were so embarrassed when he
started to stand on street corners and spout a lot of crazy mumbo-jumbo
about love of all things.

The police arrested him and some of his followers and by some curious
and unexplained circumstances he died in jail.
It was very sad because Mom and Pop had done all they could to raise a
good, upstanding citizen with strong moral character.
He should have been a doctor or a lawyer or an envelope salesman like
the neighbor's boy Walter who drives a Mercedes and gets invited to
parties with the Governor.

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