Atheism

                              Atheism

“The lyric had functions in religious and other terms.”

~ Michael Schmidt, The First Poets, 10

So what has changed?  Nothing really, except

We now make lust itself a god, divine

Without the need of Venus.  We have swept

The gods away, those ones of love and wine,

Of wisdom, and of poetry.  Today

We make romantic love our holy god,

Not needing Dionysus or the sway

Athena held in upright minds.  How odd

That now we worship upright male desire

All swollen, full of blood and veins, and do

Not ask divinity to drive it.  Fire

In thighs accomplishes the godless coup.

..No incense, chanting, or belief is now

….Required.  The sex itself replaces any vow.