In a mad world the voice of reason
sounds like the raving of a
madman and all doors
are barred against
it, all faces
turned
away
from
sweet
Sophia as she
pleads behind a
glass wall ('Poor Cassandra!'
they say, embarrassed for her).
All the towering fears of mankind
are raised in a panic against
the flesh and blood
prophets
of our
time
lest
we be
painted
with the painter's brush.
My god! My god.
They work so hard, so earnestly.
They want so much to be good.
They want to walk a righteous path.
They want to defend the defenseless.
They want to cast aside the brutish
ideals of a savage past.
My god! Woe this embattled youth!
To exhaust such precious strength
and fertility enriching men
who hate them!
My god!
To labor so endlessly, so pointlessly,
building nothing and leaving
nothing behind.
"No one could be so evil!" they say.
Except of course
He Who Shall Not Be Named
unless it's with thoughtless mockery
and derision, a foolish arrow
through a foolish heart
that would cease to
beat should it
recognize
the
depth
of the calumny
that forms the very core
of their ancestral history.
My god!
"Nothing that happened a hundred
years ago could affect us today!"
Or fifty years
or ten
or a year
or a month.
Who remembers 9/11?
Who remembers covid?
Who remembers the bloody
mattresses and the high chair?
Who remembers the Epstein list?
Who remembers the little girls
screaming in the dungeon
in Belgium and the
police officers
who walked
away?
Who remembers the hundreds
of thousands of children
who crossed the
border
from
Mexico
and vanished?
Who remembers the sixty-five
million children mercilessly
slaughtered
inside
their
mother's wombs?
Does Sophia weep for them?
Or does she watch with
indifference as
yet another
young
woman
sacrifices
her blood for the
spectral lights of an illusion?
Has the voice of reason convinced
himself of his own madness?
Or has it always been
this way
and
so
he's at peace,
knowing that those
who know know they know
nothing at all, truly, and are only
driven to seek surety out of their
own kind of madness and will
only discover, to their
sorrow, a different
illusion?
Who's to say?
For my own part, I separate, too
heartbroken to watch young
people work two jobs,
raise no children,
and bear
only
the
burden
of debt for
an education
in confusion and misery.
I am not wise.
I labor under all the same illusions,
plus a few more of my own devising.
I know no truth, not really.
I remember nothing.
I'm a nobody, a serf, a laborer who
will never be allowed to set
down my burdens
after
a
job
well done,
whose sacrifices
only add to the wealth
of men and women who despise me.
Am I pathetic to feel grateful, still,
to be here? For a chance to walk
a righteous path, to defend
the defenseless,
to stand up
against
the
brutish
ideals of this
savage world?
Probably.
September 28, 2026
