The smoke creeps perfect ‘neath and ‘round each hearse,

as liquid darkness consumes the light over all the Earth.

Bodies lay everywhere dead lifeless to noise and sound, to

the saving sermons potent and dangerous, contagions unbound.

A daughter is gone and her parents cry together,

but their son’s amity is the worst of their fears,

for war beyond the lines decries perfect innocence;

she was guilty afore her birth according to his scriptures.

For all carry burdens in a world burning under god;

so long as there is suffering, guilt should infect the hearts of all.

Lost and afraid most pray for help blind to their utility,

not knowing therein themselves lies the answer to seeing.

The faithful step proud and powerful on forward,

to advocate peace by the sharp edges of guilt and sword;

it is a message perpetuated through children’s night dreams,

infecting the only message of love worth knowing.

The fear of damnation shakes the mind with instability,

confining the thinker’s capacity to speculate reality,

for when reason is dead the automaton breathes no life;

so possessed by fear and avarice he will never live alive.

I possess in my head a machine more powerful than design;

inside each of us exists the sanctum of the mind;

it can contemplate its place inside the universe;

it even fashions language into rhyming meter and verse.

To delve like a bird’s first flight into our imaginations,

we plunge into the deepest mysteries using science and reason,

in which we manufacture our own meaning and identity,

discovering who we really are within this basic eternal unity.

We are all beautifully connected by time and memory,

held together limitlessly by the power of love and curiosity,

for unlimited brilliant intellect is hidden behind the eyes, and

too often untapped potential rests inside the home of the mind.