THE CHAPLAIN AND CHIEF LEE

Chief Lee, concerned, with his people,
Is inspired inside a steeple,
On top of his favourite church,
Within which the congregation perch on creaky pews,
They hear their minister spews,
Owing to his constant intoxication
The chaplain will sway and lurch,
While preaching about leeching and negative traits,
His alcoholism is funded by the weekly collection plates,
He urges feelings of love in people he hates.

One night in his bed, some anonymous man lay down beside him,
‘Who are you?’ He asks him, but the stranger is dead.
Next morning, mourning, he consults his most loyal parishioners.
Can the chap who’d lain next to the chaplain the previous night be identified?
No, they shake their heads in unison,
‘No, no,’ so many of them cried.
Could their chaplain—while drunk, perhaps—have killed a stranger in his sleep?
A stranger who might have prayed that if he died the Lord his soul might keep.
Was the chaplain to be believed?
They suddenly began to speculate, after years of being deceived.
The chaplain shook his hung over head,
Then—as was typical in the mornings—heaved.
As a youth, he’d felt consumed by the Holy Spirit,
Now, blinking bloodshot eyes, he consumes, wholly, spirits.