"My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers."     Matthew 21:13

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That you took cattle and sheep 

and herded their trinkets at the foothold of the temple

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That there were gods you peddled in the marketplace like merchants

and those gods were the hands of man running under the table

running up her leg

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That you would open a holy book

   take out a holy word crush it with your fist

         and sprinkle it into her drink

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And that if your hands of man were not guilty of this act

that instead, you kneeled down

perching on her ankle

whispering in her ear

   this is the word of the Lord

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That you take hands of love and extract what is left of the word

That your fathers and mothers were farmers and brothers of the world

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That you take their livestock down into the temple for slaughter

That your act of conversion is not a sin

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That you take one hand and brush it across the altar

and with the other you rip apart her walls

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That you spit on the Earth’s primordial body

and you rip apart the bodies of earth

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Then when there is nothing left

        and no false gods to worship

  you start to pray

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That your bankrupt business is salvaged and bolstered        again and again

       so your golden towers can be erected 

          on top of the chapel doors

            forever 

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That you have forgotten that once a man stood at the foot of the church

and overturned the tables of the money changers 

and the seats of those who sold doves

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That the house of the Lord requires a contractor

who does not want to sell the bricks to the highest bidder

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That business concludes at her feet

before you enter her temple

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That you have declared today and forever

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Let money be made on the body of the Lord,

       Let her body be used and discarded

              Let slaughter be more than cattle and sheep

Let slaughter be the name of this temple