print previewback DIANE SEUSS
It’s Like This
The prayers of non-believers are beautiful like women
desperate to be beautiful are beautiful, but beautiful
in a way that makes God sick a bit like one too many
petit fours. God’s also turned off by the prayers
of believers. They’re sweaty and overwrought,
not like stalkers but like window peekers, who tend
toward introversion and stuttering, did you know that?
I once cured a window peeker by setting him up with some
speech therapy. God doesn’t even go that far. God’s thing
is go ahead and set up your own speech therapy.
God doesn’t like crowds or cuddling and hates gifts,
which end up stranding the recipient in the Desert
of Endless Gratitude. Begging God doesn’t work.
I know begging doesn’t work. If it worked, I wouldn’t be
so sad. In fact, if you beg, you’re sunk. Ask Gerard
Manley Hopkins. Ask Skinny Neckvessel, one of those
fat guys on whom bullies hung a fatal nickname. I tried
doing some research on the surname Neckvessel
and all I got was info on carotid artery disease.
How would you like to be Skinny Neckvessel,
even for a day, a guy who had to enter the door
of his own house sideways, a guy so fat that his only
comfort was three TV dinners and a Mrs. Smith’s
Dutch Apple Pie. God’s point of view is that being God
is a lot like being Skinny Neckvessel, that is, really large
and really uncomfortable and filled with bitterness
and filled with pie. Not to mention that Skinny
Neckvessel was shot and killed for cheating at cards
in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Huge and far from home
and right between the eyes, that’s God’s point of view. 
A Poet Came to Town
As a child I ate and mourned.
It’s Like This