Greenclad.

So Long, Charlie

(Text: Luke 17.2)

"It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble."

......................

Within the circle of my private self
I don't respect religious faith at all,
and think that if one pushes it about
that every hubris opens up its fall.

If to bleat from books just like a lost sheep
is your thing, to rattle your chains of mind
imagining kind shepherds coddling
or chains are music (to the deaf and blind)

then fine. It's not for me to show the way,
since every way leads down to death and then,
nobody knows anything. Believe no bling
can gleam a special destiny or yen.

Those doorstep beggars in the wind and rain*
don't expect respect that foist their wares,
nor re-visit  houses shafted them off
with a drive-by to revenge their cares.

So I respect their doggedness, although
they are predators upon the failing.
I wish them every failure in their game;
and yet I'd never like to think them ailing.

But soft-boiled babies these assassins are,
who never yet have learned morality,
tied to suckling texts and fed on folly,
promised their selfish baubles a houri.

Behind each hand that strikes an Imam lies
who twisted all the texts to violent end
who is the cause of stumbling to the child
the weak and crumbling ego to fiend-friend.

Better those false priests deep in the deep
go cast themselves that cause their own to weep
and pull down all religion into force
of whirlpool war - for when shall that wind sleep?

..........................

*Such as Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons etc