Here’s me at eight years old
I’m going to hell
That’s the way it is
But I can avoid this terrible thing
By just confessing my sins
I know I have lots of them
Grownups people who know
Are always telling me
To stop being bad and start being good
But I can never think of sins to confess
They tell me I’ve done a bad thing
And I see what they’re talking about
But when I examine my conscience
I can only remember getting yelled at
So sometimes I pad my time
In the confessional
With fictions
Delinquencies thefts acts of violence
Such as I can imagine
And they are more or less true in a general sense
No the real catch
The real damning provision
Was slipped into the Act of Contrition I recite daily
A firm purpose of amendment
I wish to amend
But I fail at firm purposes
And the fear of condemnation
Albeit an already accomplished fact
Exceeds both the conceivable pain of punishment
And the conceivable relief absolution would afford
For eternity cannot be conceived
Nor the shame of one condemned
Some time in the future I will ask
Why does God who loves me
Send me to hell
And the answer will return
Ah but you send yourself to hell
With your unrepentant depravity
Oh but I do repent
I do repent