ISM

I was born as a jew to atheist parents
They gave me a choice, they gave me a balance
My astronomer father would show me comets of lava the same stars that my artist mom would paint on a canvas
Found spirituality in art and science
Not what god designed but in my thoughts and mind
The beauty of evolution, puzzles of nature weaving together conceiving humans, and its all intertwined
My parents sent me to a Jewish middle school
And everything I learned I questioned and ridiculed
I used to get sent to the principle
Overly satirical of anything traditional
Kosher school eating matza and latkas
You could find me dealing ham by the locker
My bar mitzvah speech even dissed Judaism
It wasn’t in this levy’s genes to feel true religion
But Oseh Shalom, the prayer therapeutic
Chills on my arm, they’re resounding in unison
What I realized in the shower of music
Not the power of God, but the power of humans

I was born in a prism
All that was real was the flatness of vision
The pastures and rivers, The Blackness and vastness that acts as a prison
Till I mastered the ism
I escaped from the fear and the pain in the ism
So I’m never gunna take his name in vein in the ism
The sun from the ism, the rain from the ism
Phenomena surrounding us explained by the ism
I followed the ism, I swallowed the ism
I sought out the children and I taught them the ism
The community in unity was lost in the ism
Wrote a book on the ism and I called it religion
But biblical exposition too literal in the ism
Individuals were waiting for miracles in the ism
Sticking to the traditions and Singing hymns to the ism
Created limited wisdom and split us in a division
Put our faith into the omnipotence of the ism
Till it severed identity and individualism
Spirits diminished living beyond the present
Our primitive inhibitions, let ignorance win the schism
Found fear, found pain found greed in the ism
Ignored progress, we just bleed for the ism
No faith, they believe in belief of the ism
The only way to be free was free of the ism