(I Was Drunk At The) Pulpit

I was drunk at the pulpit, I knew it was wrong
 And I left in mid-sermon tempted by a bar-house song
 The pews creaked and shifted as they turned to watch me leave
 And I pulled a little bottle from the pocket in my sleeve
 The sunlight was stronger to my church-dark widened eyes
 Than the light which had blinded me with Christ's own half-lies
 Yes mid-sunday morning, my old playmates sat
 Round a stumble stained table, Christopher spat
 And he kicked out a chair and showed me to sit
 They were grinning and dribbling with comforted heads
 Their wives were in church or at home and in beds
 Well I sucked down a cupful and God shone within
 In a red earthen mask, and I saw where I'd been was a palace of sin
 Let them abstain on unbucking high horses
 Poor wooden structures which merely eye courses
 That these log heads run just to find some respite
 In the whiskey-induced holy unending night
 Yes I thought I saw new light, the black one which dimmed
 The bleached garments with which mangled peons stayed rimmed
 Oh the church songs they paled next to this fiery chorus
 Composed from a living depth especially for us
 There were arms linked in sympathy, gilded the glaring
 Of these bloated companions, who hid 'neath their swearing
 Some need for another, kin to brother lust
 Which coarse words and music, was faith and was trust
 Yes I saw a dependence, an inherent weakness
 Within walls which hid sunlight and hindered all frankness
 That floor there supported what souls couldn't stand
 On their own in their own eyes, to hint they are men
 Who are slave to their vision but to that alone
 Yes each of them cloistered fear of being alone
 Wherever folks gather, to imply a rule
 They are each one a sinner, each one a fool
 For if I drink my whiskey, and if I sing a song
 I have no breast companion, a-trailing along
 To imagine a sharing of burdens I earned
 To steal from the embers i strove so to burn
 God is one's corpus, and Jesus one's blood
 The world is within you, without is of mud...