Deify

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.

Glass House

Bright and silent

In a long-abandoned lot

Stood a glass house

Showing nothing to onlookers

But their own confused reflections.

None knew who built it,

Or when, 

Or why,

Or who dwelt there.

They never showed.

What lay within glass walls?

Imagination filled the gap

Theories were concocted, discarded

And picked up anew.

Legends were weaved

About the slightest detail

A glint in the sun,

A peripheral glimpse someone might have seen.

Controversy raged.

Factions formed, splintered,

Fought and accused and persecuted

The glass house became an island of calm

In an ocean of tumult, the waves

Stirred by its very existence.

Finally, one day,

A brave child picked up a rock

And threw it into the glass

Inflicting a small crack

Upon the featureless facade.

To a collective gasp,

A hitherto unseen door opened,

And a lone figure hobbled out:

An old, unremarkable man.

"Knock it off, you kids,"

He shouted,

"I'm trying to sleep in here!"

He retired,

Closing the door behind him.

And the glass house remains,

Slightly cracked,

Ignored and forgotten,

Reflecting the sky.

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