I take my soul out of my pocket

and prod it

from time to time.

It gasps

and

I know it’s still alive.

Then

I throw it through a plate glass window

and listen to it scream.

It’s a loyal frog who loves me

I heat it up slowly

in its own bubble bath.

It looks like an ugly angry child

with all of its scars,

but it belongs to me.

What does it profit a man to gain the whole world

but lose his soul?

Many have recommended that I get rid of my soul,

but I laugh at them, and pull it out of my pocket and catch it—it’s worth more to me than the whole world.

The soulless will always give the same advice—”get rid of it—it’s like an appendix—you won’t even miss it,”

but they’re wrong.

The soul must be nurtured and abused to grow strong.

Your soul needs to hear music

played from its own heart strings.

The fake world

full of plate glass windows

hates

a soul

as strong as a golf ball, struck

by a bad golfer

on a city golf course.

I have broken more windows

than a burglar (by accident, of course)

An old man walked out to me on hole number 13, holding my golf ball

“Is this yours?” He asked me.

Several lies entered my mind (that’s a side-effect of being a fiction writer, but I told the truth because of my religious upbringing)

“Yes.”

“You need some lessons. Your ball almost ended my life.”

“How old are you?” I asked him.

“I’ve slept longer than you’ve lived.”

Then he walked home to go sleep some more, I guess.

In prison, they put a man in a box

In the world, they put a man in prison

those invisible bars are real

You can feel them when you are afraid, secure, and know you are doing the right thing.

I wonder what it feels like to escape from prison. It must feel like a resurrection,

like you are born again.

The following things take on a new meaning when you steal your freedom:

Making love to a woman

Eating a hamburger

Driving down the road without a license

And I must say…

Breaking the rules is more fun than breaking plate glass windows with golf balls.

You can really appreciate life, when they try to take it from you.

Then, the police are chasing your Shelby GT500

and they just called in a chopper,

and you hit the go-baby-go.

It’s not your body that they want

It’s your soul

They want to put it in a glass jar without any holes

They’ll piss on it to preserve it

Why should we talk about the soul?

People don’t know that they lost it

They’re not even looking for it

And the soulless who know

are the most dangerous

they’ll try to squash it

they’ll put it in a strangle hold

they’ll say it’s for your own good

or for the good of others

they’ll say the soul is dangerous

because it tells the truth too much.