Why I'll finish the bible this semester

Because I have two hundred pages left.
Because I gave up working out.
Because I gave up thirsty Thursdays and most of my weekends too.
Because I moved  out of a party house.
Because I want too.
Because Sexson said we didn't need to read the Apocrypha.
Because Katie picked up shifts for me at work.
Because I felt the need to read the bible to gain an understanding of where literature springs.
Because I gave up nights of sleep.
Because I skipped classes to read.
Because I'm a Christian, and a Catholic, and a Protestant.
Because Sexson said it wasn't possible in a month (which it isn't...)
Because I was raising Zack.
Because it's full of stories.
Because we need to know why the children die.
Because I need veritas.
Because Leviticus is so boring and drawl and exciting.
Because And deserves to come first.
Because Eliot is immersed in the Bible.
Because Donna Horraway thinks we should get rid of it.
Because Hawkins thinks it's only a set of morals.
Because Polkinghorne understands it isn't.
Because A Catholic told me I was going to hell.
Because I've read it before and it needed to be read again.
Because my mother and father read it.
Because it's the Canon.
Because it's misunderstood, misread, misprisioned, and misvalued.
Because it's the most widely know unread book.
Because people sneak it into China.
Because it's a source of power, good and evil.
Because Nietzsche told me God was dead.
Because the spirit giveth life and the letter taketh away.
Because of Martyrs and Thomas Merton.
Because of Dante and Shakespeare and the Fiddler on the Roof.
Because I WANT I WANT I WANT, and I don't want to want after things anymore.
Because I don't want to turn again.
Because I want the whole view, cracked and sprinkled with cuts.
Because people won't read the bible.
Because proof is a word we describe our conventions to.
Because my name means the Rich King and Steward that Usurps the Heel.
Because my cup empties and refills and overfloweth.
Because I do not listen.
But mainly because I can say I read the bible in three months.
Because I didn't die in what should have been a short roll off a steep pass.
Because the world looks more beautiful now.
Because I respect that which I did not before.
Because my father received a job in the Virgin Islands.
Because of my brother.
Because of my friends.
Because beauty is diminishing in this windowed perception and it needs to bear flesh.