The Preacher's Odyssey
Thomas, an apostle of Jesus,
Called
Or so presumed.
He was not an angel.
No,
He never claimed.
Although he played the part well.
Brother Tom,
Like we all called him,
Was a walking paradox.
Because the liquor he loathed he loved
And the lady of the night
Whose deeds he shunned,
She he loved to spend the night in the comfort of her arms.
It started when the Priest was arrested for raping a minor to death.
(The charges would have remained even if the victim,
Was not a minor.)
Amidst these heartaches and funeral tears
Love poems lost relevance,
And so lost Brother Tom his faith,
And sermons.
The wow-worth Sunday sermons
Seemed to lose their meaning and fire
In the sinful fog of the incarcerated priest.
The pulpits defiled by youthful pastors on cellular phones,
Dry hell bound thoughts knocking at the base of their eardrums.
It seemed the whole congregation
Was kin on exchanging pleasantries with the prince of darkness.
The cries and pleas to repentance
Muffled into a dead silence
Somewhere in the hollow streets of idolatry.
And all the while,
Brother Tom on nights
Lost his way home and stumbled into a brothel
There he spend the whole night kissing the bare lips of the brown bottle.
Years on end passed,
Until one day on his way to Damascus
The voice of the righteous encounter spoke to him.
Brother Tom,
No,
Apostle Thomas
Was revived to his former zeal!
#StvnyPoetry
Copyright © Steven Ureke | Year Posted 2023
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