God came down to earth to make amends But alas, such time had passed, he had no friends, They all looked at him wrong, Said he should move along, His presence was spoiling their weekends.
Outraged by their outlandish audacity, Their abject lack of perspicacity, He formed an intention To hatch an invention Inspired by his wrath and pugnacity.
He thought to bury them in a flood Sink their bodies in the silt and the mud But he did that before, And he’s not one to bore, He couldn’t go back without shedding some blood.
The idea of setting all of them on fire, Like the Sodom and Gomorrah they admire, Seemed to be fun enough, But this new batch was tough, The flames of hell would hardly make them perspire.
“Slaughter their children!” he decided at last, As he so very often did in the past, There is no better way, For a real god to say, “I love you; now love me and do as I asked.”
Diffused in the ambience, Lost amongst static, Alone in space and in time, Distance made frantic- Violence released me, Set me out among the stars, Death is all you see.
Split, the atoms are harnessed, Humbled before man, Once a thing, now another; Lost from what began- Found now in power; Expressed, extracted, exhumed, In our last hours.
Addled by my mortality, I retreat from reality; Let it rest for the day, As would I if I could again, Let this new become what has been, And leave my mind to play.
What dreams I had when I was young! Songs of color my mind had sung, Vague thoughts caught in fugue state. All I dream now is darkness, Strapped inside this drifting harness, As life and death debate.
He had pictures in a dusty stack, Joy flowed out from every frozen stance As he leapt full meters dancing the gopak. I often think about that, Everything I loved about him, My favorite moments and most influential chats, The smoke of an empty shell casing expressed as his whim. Poor man drank himself dead All while entertaining my young self.
More than most, his imprint is pressed upon my head, His humor and wisdom were both top shelf; He offered so much guidance through film and book, When I needed it/him more than I knew, We stayed up all night discussing his life, what it took, And thus I learned about mine and grew. Coy was I in response to his caring stance, Until he took his own life, and it destroyed me, but… Boy, let me tell you, that man could dance.
“My god, why hast thou forsaken me?” A call heard throughout history, Always desperate to solve this unspoken mystery, As if we’ve glimpsed the last page, And yet were met with a different end. Did we read the wrong book? Or were those pages torn out because we dared to look? We reach the end, our end, the end and as always, It ends in a shout, “My god, why hast thou forsaken me?”
I hear it through the threads of time, Wrapped, quilted, packaged in plastic, However you’ll take it, If you can take it. But you won’t, Unless you were the one to make it. Those women tied to stakes, Burned battered and stoned, Still tried to atone, refusing truth for punishment, Punished even for that sentiment, Then died, screaming, “My god, why hast thou forsaken me?”
The sound echoes ever on, Called up through the ages like water in an oasis, An alien thing that lives in absurd places, A geographical red flag that you refuse to drink. Oh, but you’ll brag about the dehydration, Carry your cross loud on dubs and hydraulics, With a pair of truck nuts And your moms name spelled out in guns. While 10,000 children each day die from your exaggeration, Drinking deep while they thirst for water, Through parched lips they sputter: “My god, why hast thou forsaken me.”
Do you hear it too, The unholy fugue? The dirge that’s been stuck in your playlist, But you always skip; To listen to some other tune dropping from dead lips. It’s always there, I promise you, Like the sound of gas seeping in through a shower head, In a room full of the dead, Or soon to be dead anyway, Removing their clothes, and whispering quietly As not to shake the others, “My god, why hast thou forsaken me?”
The sound is probably so loud at this point, And you’ve ignored it so long, That to recognize it would be like a fish cataloging the water, Quantifying, tagging, and reselling to those who would bother, Looking for the finer things, When the finer things are just the things possessed by another. But the children hear it clearly, It’s still fresh to them for a while, It takes years of parents and owners telling them shut their ears, Telling them what they really hear, But when those same kids are locked in cages, dungeons, or in the arms of the vile, They hear it clearly, and no one is there to plug their ears, So they whimper through tears, “My god, why hast thou forsaken me?”
If you hear it now, You’re in good company, Even the man Jesus died on the cross, Or so they say, With the sound resounding loud in his ears, as he looked up to the heavens and asked, “My god, why hast thou forsaken me?” To no response.
Grow Gray With Me 