Salvation is free, the Cranberries sang,
and we tend to believe pop music
on our way to and from being busy -
oh, busy with something, I guess;
it's not too important - except once or twice
when you hear a story,
or meet someone,
or are threatened by mass genocide.
Then you stop and have to think.

What, with the background music and the language -
the passion! the sweetness
of falling in love so deep that life and death vanish.
You have no choice but to want to make your own story;
like the one in the good book, where he says,
"Enter not into temptation..."
'Cause then they'll pay attention and say,
"Wow, he's just like Mel Gibson in that one movie,
when he wore a kilt.
His life meant something."

But (and there must be a but
to save yourself from yourself) you think,
how tearfully inconvenient,
when IBM pays for weekly DVD rentals;
how impossible to stay hanging on your cross
and not cry mercy; and to live;
like refraining from slapping the snooze button
when the alarm clock's redeeming screech reminds,
"It is now 8 AM, Saturday morning,
and you have nothing scheduled today
except an appointment to change the world."