After months of tirelessly serving the Baptists, they surprised me and Grant by sending us an email listing all the things about us that they disapproved of. (The list of sins included "playing Solitaire on our laptop", playing cards being verboten in the Russian Baptist cosmos.) Oddly enough, in the letter of condemnation, the Baptist Grand Dragon mistakenly wrote my name as "Davis" three times in a row, for no apparent reason.
Thus sparking a poem on the divided nature of my soul in 2004, as I tried to be a missionary.
My apologies to Maya Angelou.
* * * *
I KNOW WHY THE DAVIS SINGS
The David leaps
On the back of the wind
And floats downstream
‘til the current ends
And dips his cup
In the keg of beer
And dares to drink it dry.
But the Davis stalks
Down his Baptist cage,
Condemned by pastors
Thrice his age,
Accused of sins
Which Betty Page
Would shy from at her wildest.
The Davis dreams
Of a different world
Where flags of joy
And peace unfurl
And Baptists cannot
Make him hurl
By curtailing his freedom.
The David pees
Into the breeze
And stands and laughs
Amidst the trees
The backsplash
Matters not to he,
For the David has his freedom.
But the Davis chafes
At legalist rules
Imposed by
Sanctimonious fools
And silently screams
At Baptists tools…
For the Davis longs for freedom.