Lord
Ken Baumann
ConAgra, bread-keeper; save us from our misery.
The stores dried up, people float in and out as if in a dream, wandering empty aisles and pushing imagined carts, checking out their bounty, self-scanning.
May you please render us saved.
And the farmers in Portland and Studio City and Brooklyn, with their small hands and meager yields, their rooftop stalks, they have been taken and put up in cages.
Make them free.
Please, host, grant us salve; let us bathe in syrups and take in soy.
For if not saved we will perish, and go back into the earth, as dust, much as the sectioned-off fields of plenty were commanded to go back into the earth, as dust, at your power and mercy.
And may you relinquish the water, let it trickle into our cracked hands, let it be our balm, and let our mouths be healed and let it be cold and swallowed, let full and capped bottles rain from the heavens.
Please, grant us charity.
Lord, our Lord, please leave the children with us; let them grow and eat Wheeties and CoCo Pebbles; let General Mills bless them and infuse their bones with essential vitamins and minerals; keep their bones from breaking and their heads from cracking on the dry pavement, the ghostly pavement; as the trucks do not come, anymore.
Let it be known that your praises will be sung, and that the beef you slaughter once again will be a sacrifice from us, spiritually, as we cannot actually raise cattle here in these parched lands, but just let it be known that we would kill them for you, if we could.
ConAgra. ConAgra! CONAGRA!
Ohhhhh holy bread keeper sssave us, let the wells fill up again ConAG-RAH! Keep growing, ConAG-RAH! Keep GROWING and letitraindowninBOUnty, lord, our god, our god, our god our god con our god con our god CON our god CON! our god CON—
Brothers and sisters, men and women both white and black, skin of all colors, see you here the sister's testimony, see you here that she is praising our good lord and asking its mercy. See you here she is asking to EAT. She wants SUSTENANCE. Say it with me now SUSTENANCE.
Good. As you know, the lord giveth and taketh away, that we know from the Old Book, the Good Book. And now, he has taketh away.
Amen!
That's right.
Those patented soy beans will just not grow without a renewed license.
Praise be!
Tell em now!
That's right my people, this problem, this problem, this extraordinary sin is not from our Lord, good god now. The problem is with the men in power. (Amen!) The men in suits! (Amen amen!) The men with the shiny pens (AMEN!) who SIGN INTO LAW (OHH!) a mandate that STRIPS the licenses from our keeper, STRIPS the BRRREAD fromourchildrensmouths, STRIPS AWAY OUR FREEDOM! OUR POWER TO CHOOSE! LET ME HEAR YOU SAY
AAAAAAAMEN!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMEN!
My oh my, I feel the power. I feel it in you people. I feel it in your empty stomachs, for what those men in suits keep out of our stomachs will be filled with BLOOD, my people! Blood from the men with pens! Blood from the tariff makers! BLOOOD from the regulators! BLOOOD from the nutritionists! BLOOOD from all those who reject our very right and sacred pleasure to FEED!
LET ME HEAR YOU SAY—
—AAAAAAAAAAAMEN!
Alright, alright. Let's calm, now. Lest not forget our prayer, the alpha and the omega, the seed beneath the stalk. C'mon, now.
Lord. ConAgra.
Grant us charity.
Ken Baumann is. For more information, visit kenbaumann.com