My Church

We’re always prompt and on time,

every Friday night, we walk the line.

We practice scriptures all through the week,

our church is not for the soft or the meek.

I’ve tried to visit other churches,

I was judged as I walked through the door.

My voice froze in my chest, my feet were glued to the floor.

I pile the makeup high on my face,

to try to hide all the pain.

But when my voice carries through,

They hear my despair all the same.

The members seek right from wrong,

search for a place to belong…

You don’t have to be pretty or carry

A lot of dough,

you just have to carry a tune.

In my church, its ok to break into dance,

to wear really short pants,

its ok to no longer pretend,

to have all the answers.

We left them somewhere upon the

Altar of broken dreams.

We are still searching for salvation, it seems…

I can’t be around angels,

I’m afraid I will burn right through their halos,

with the dark cold of my searing past,

and the many squeletons that live

In my closets made of glass.

The sinners never held me up,

above the places that I couldn’t reach.

This church is made of the loneliness

of the spare, no one questions

Why you are there.

We’ve all decided we can’t bare

to get on our knees and preach.

We wail our sorrows into a much-used mike,

we screech and hiss our dreams and our fright,

we send our love across the room,

to try to dissipate some of the gloom.

The preacher sits safely behind his blinking

bible, its his job to hold it together when we

all start to fall apart.

I am reliving my teenage years when I was just

a shadow longing for a spark in the dark,

You just found the spotlight and moth to the flame,

You refuse to remain…elsewhere.

Its a fragile house of puppets, this place

that we call home.

I’ll see you next Friday and please, don’t be late.

I will scream my confessions on the pedestal of my hate.

We know we’ll never make it to the pearly gates,

but maybe hell has a beaten-up stage and a leaky microphone,

and we’ll sing an almost- perfect song…

When all of the saints have gone. 

-By Jaleh Kazemi

Jaleh Kazemi was born in Ivory Coast (a country in West Africa) of an American mother and an Iranian father. She moved to Lafayette, her mother's home town, in 1993 to pursue an American college education. She obtained a Bachelor Degree in English Education at ULL (then USL) in 2000. She received a Master of Arts Degree in French in 2006 at ULL. She is currently a doctorate student with an ABD (All But Doctorate) status in Francophone Studies in the ULL Modern Language Department. She is the proud mother of Kadin Alexander Louis Richard and Koral Sharon Elizabeth Richard.