The desert breeds prophets, it seems.
For lack and desolation
Demand austerity and fatalism
Offering space for belief in return
Provided there is only one.
Henotheism is silent in its solitude
Talking to the One and Only
Becomes an internal debate
An endless war against Self.
A peace treaty demands witness
And companions cry for more for less
Divine laws are carved into sun-bleached rock
Unmalleable at birth, made to be broken
Or eroded until indistinct in interpretation
Like a mirage, simmering in the raging heat
Only to reveal a reflection of an empty bowl
When approached in hopeful anticipation.
Only the great Shadow and its castings
On the sterile earth
Under a blank sky
Waiting to die
And become fuel
For the Chosen
To strangle the air
And broil the land
(Why should the Sun have all the fun?)
Lift Hell from the holy books
And sear it into Life,
Where it ought to be.
Slow-roast it all, ash and concrete and sand
Spin this globe to a glassy eye
Its dark pupil fixed firmly on heaven
Its cornea reflecting weary faces from below
Its hard shell bearing no footsteps to follow
Just the etched sayings of the prophets,
Too loudly prophesying
To hear the here and now.
Staring longingly at an imagined past
While the future shrivels in mute neglect
And what could have been
Becomes what was, before
You burned the Garden.
Carbon scattered and swept away,
Tracing its passage with elemental progeny
Burning bright silicon
Its eternal playlist looped to endless repeat:
History.