CANTO I.
The prophet stood atop his mountain and looked across the lands,
He could see the ebb of distant waves and the beach’s shining sands;
The searing sun in the blue-white sky beat down upon his chest,
And his eyes shone with a prudent fire, reflecting a heart professed;
“The earth may turn, and the earth may burn” he’d solemnly recite,
“How the day of this inferior world shall suddenly become night.
Hapless mortality and a humanesque malady afflicts me to the core;
The wasted potential of a race so existential when they should be so much
more.
Are you ready for the circle --the everlasting Kingdom Come?
The storybook of glory and the mortal conundrum;
Are you willing to hear a tale of how we’ve all been dreadfully wrong?
Or are you ashamed of the past and present, and the future’s far too long?
For there always is an antidote to the world’s cascading disease--
The plague of falsified reason seemingly carried by the breeze
Shall always have a remedy where faiths and freedoms end:
The pinpoint of reality which hopes and fears will mend.
How far away is freedom...or is it truly not so far?
It all depends on the human race’s choice of peace or war.
How far are we from liberty if the concept has any worth?
The answer lies within the genes all have had since before their birth.
Is there a point to living life other than our wants or needs?
The truths beyond all wisdom’s end are planted like celestial seeds.
Will there always be authority to rely upon when we fail?
The tradition of all governments is the primal way we ail.
For authority is death --a fatal wound to the tortured souls
Who rely on outer forces to commandeer their roles;
But the death doesn’t end their lives, it just condemns them to live a lie
Within a doctrinated future, and a changeable historic tie.
And that is the saddest thing about the paradox of humanity:
United we are all blind, though on our own we can clearly see.
But that is all about to change...we are coming to the brink
Where mankind will see its flaws and finally begin to think.
We look to the desired ‘God’ to ease and nullify our fears,
We pray for resurrections of lost martyrs from lost years.
When the truth becomes so shrouded in the irrationality of a creed,
We seem to want a mystic escape, and a barrier from need.
We drown ourselves in dogmas --unpragmatic points of view--
To forget our worths and imports and remember things untrue;
We retain all rights and freedoms we have had since life began,
And we blame our lack of fortune on the mulishness of man.
Though we live with no true boundaries except those which we create,
We still have some desire to rely on ‘twist of fate’;
But the reasons are obscure and near impossible to find,
For the key to omniscient truths lie within each human’s mind.
Although mankind has never quite known where to draw the fragile line
Between reality and prophesy, rational and asinine,
Juxtapositional arguments slowly pollute the air
With absurdity and contradiction, through the gradual lack of care.
The intricacies of passion force all men to watch their say
Else the conversant double standards all but block the truest way;
The blatancy of romance makes a mockery of love,
With the force-fed faiths of flattery and the lack thereof.
So the dance between good common sense and its flimsy counterpart
Turns from a waltz into a tango, from a chore into an art;
In a war without a winner or a loser --so it seems,
The outcome is decided in the realm of clouded dreams.
So the prophet pondered upon the world and all its numerous flaws:
The heedful obeisance of mankind to superficial laws;
And he came to the conclusion that there may well be a dawn--
A plausible realisation, an ideal paragon.
He nodded his head in surety of what he knew was right,
That the darkness of society may one day come alight;
He concluded that the possibilities are plentiful and vast,
And that the future is wide open if man learns from his bleak past.
By: E. Shaun Russell
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E. Shaun Russell Poet, Musician, Atheist, Extropic Artist
==============================> Transhumanities editor for Homo Excelsior
Kineticize your potential... http://www.excelsior.org
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