THE LOOSE GODS

The loose gods like us,

they are everywhere about us,

and our heels are winged by them,

our breath is shaped by them,

a lady’s dress is lifted at the hem for them,

and the world bows!

 

<a href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-holding-blue-flowers-1337714/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Source</a>

Up and down the streets their pundits walk,

biffed out in hip and shapely side;

tech-no-cracy about them,

flicker by flicker and slide by slide

showing what’s under the petalled hem,

while enamoured millions drool

in well-oiled gratitude

to the bray, bray, bray of Fool

(and he is a loose god, too!).

Sex is dethroned and driven hard;

death’s as loose as the gods themselves;

a million gadgets are bought and sold,

bought and sold, bought and sold;

and the world gives up on genuine silver-bronze,

and drives coarse gold, coarse gold.

 

The aged are sadder gods than those

who flitter inside the schools and out.

Our “senior citizens” don’t make amends

for having to voice their weakest shout;

and philanthropists are enthusiasts

for euthanasia’s claims:

After the sixtieth year or so

when the fieriest spirits dwindle and slow,

when we shout against humanity’s pains

and because of neglect cry out to die,

why should an old girl’s stuttering clause

not carcass her off with the world’s applause?

Philanthropists! Philanthropists!

giving kindness a needle’s edge!

I’m a young man quite unhappy here,

and close to the darkening ledge.

I’m crying out daily to end my life

because the world is a barren knife,

why not accept my cry as fact

and mortuary me as well?

If I were old, you’d do it, yes,

but I would wish your brains in hell

and pulped between a bloody press.

And the reason why we pule and cry

is because we long for some human help,

not a white coat and a clinical wish

and death from some well-trained whelp.

And because we know that pain is gross

but death from a fellow human worse,

we should burn these god-like, sordid men

and bend these fools in their hell-fire curse.

But the loose gods, loose gods, loose gods, yes,

they’re evil do-gooders through and through.

Literature has its roots in pain.

And they’ll unteach literature, too.

(from “The Light Of Day (I)” to be published soon)