The Clean People

The Clean People

The clean people worry me.
Wherever I go, I face the glare
of their immaculate smiles,
their polished demeanor
declaring the good life of order.
Where is the smudged
message of grief,
the scuff-marks of pain?
With all the dirt in the world,
who got theirs?

I think I am one
and take my place with the soiled.
We are the others
who cannot balance budgets,
nor wear white to our weddings.
Our garb is the haggard
will to survive.
Our language is the mono-
syllabics of dust.
Disorderly, vagrant,
we make our salacious way,
staining the world as we go.
We sing of flesh and the earth,

while they,
haloed in an absence of filth,
must live near God,
their heavenly songs
lodged in the unmarred
keyboards of their grins.

Here they come now,
their clean mouths open,
spilling light as they go.

- from Jim Heynen A Suitable Church

Comments

[Elliot]

Wow.

[Mumcat]

I'll second that.

Wow.