30 in 30 Poetry Edition, Day 5: Door-to-door Atheist

I’m a door-to-door atheist.
Hello ma’am, have you heard the good news about Jack Shit?
He’s a real man, and with your tithe he can do wondrously shitty things.
He can magically transform your wages into a megachurch,
with more glory given to itself than to a God that’s probably looking down in horror.
He might be wondering what got lost in translation,
His limitless knowledge translated from Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek to English with such precision
that every bible-pounding flag-waving Real American knows it as…
The Wordâ„¢.

I’m a door-to-door atheist.
No, ma’am, I am not driven by gods, ghosts, left-wing agendas, right-wing agendas, or flying spaghetti monsters.
I am not sponsored by God, Yahweh, Jehovah, Allah, prophets, kings, fishers of men, hunters of vampires or the Pfizer corporation.
I’m just a man, wondering why so many of you have to fear Hell or need paradise to help each other.
Wondering if you realize just how many religions preceded yours,
That human history has shown that mythology is only religion with no believers left to defend it.

I am still beholden to an invisible force, I call it air.
I can do miracles with it.
I can take it deep into my body.
I can reverse the flow, in the form of a question.
In the form of a challenge.
In the form of a plea.

This plea comes courtesy of 13-year-old me, living in rural Kentucky.
Terrified of coming out, with brimstone in my left hand, fire in my right.
If you believe what you believe because you chose to, not because you were supposed to,
Understand that I’m doing the same thing.
Because we both made our choices,
but I respected yours.