Poetry and then some thoughts on Religion

Today, I've stayed home from school with a headache and throat pain. That shall not keep me from studying for exams, however - which are coming up in around two weeks. I might lay off the chemistry until sunday, though, and keep to English; getting on with the task of learning 12 poems of by heart so I can quote them in my paper. 

          I used to not be very fond of poetry; I'd grown sick of the 70's poems we read in Danish in my previous schools, and although I had seen a few I liked by the 1980's Danish poet Michael Strunge, flipping through his collected poems I wasn't convinced that the genre was for me. But, if you're lucky, that is one of the things school might help you overcome - and as with drama and prose, poetry in English seemed a whole new world for me. We read Sylvia Plath, Carol Ann Duffy, Pablo Neruda (translated, of course) and William Blake; I like the first two the best, I like Neruda's political poems, and a few of Blake's such as "The Garden of Love". The task I have set myself for today is to learn Carol Ann Duffy's "Confession" by heart:

Confession
          Come away into this dark cell and tell 

          your sins to a hidden man your guardian angel

       .          works your conscience like a glove puppet It

          smells in here doesn't it does it smell 

          like a coffin how would you know C'mon

          out with them sins those little maggoty things

          that wriggle in the soul... Bless me Father...

          Just how bad have you been there's no water

          in hell merely to think of a wrong's as evil

          as doing it... For I have sinned... Penance

          will cleanse you like a bar of good soap so

          say the words into the musty gloom aye 

          on your knees let's hear that wee voice 

          recite transgression in the manner approved... Forgive me...

          You do well to stammer A proper respect

          for eternal damnation see the flicker 

          of your white hands clasping each other like

          Hansel and Gretel in the big black wood 

          cross yourself Remember the vinegar and sponge

          there's light on the other side of the door... Mother

          of God... if you can only reach it Jesus loves you.

I like the feel of this poem, how the lack of punctuation gives the poem a very overwhelming, oppressive feeling, as if multiple voices are speaking at once.
  
I am atheist myself, so I don't have any experience of my own with the Catholic confession - but aside from being atheist because I don't believe in a God, I also dislike the set rules of many religions. My parents are Christian to some extent, pretty relaxed about it as most Danes are; but they have a picture in their room stating "God is Love" - and if you do believe in some sort of God, I think it makes sense to find him/her in the beautiful things in our lives, rather than in rules and rites. Otherwise, you might end up in a "thou shalt not"-religion, with the threatening feel portrayed in the poem. Without being a theologist, I have read parts of the Bible, and oppressiveness does not strike me to be the purpose of at least the New Testament. For really, shouldn't it be whether you actually repent your wrongdoings, rather than whether you can "recite transgression in the manner approved", that counts?