Worship. A poem

Show me what you have and I’ll show you what you worship

I see the Mother with her seven children

I see the Husband dote upon his wife.

I see the preacher with his private helicopter

Show me what you have and I will show you what you worship

I see the Diva soaking up her fame.

I see the Comedian driving bar to bar, joke to joke.

I see the preacher with his shiny gulfstream

Show me what you have and I will show you what you worship

I see the Politician and his war chest.

I see the General and all his arsenal.

I see the preacher and his golden watch.

Show me what you have and I will show you what you worship

I see the Artist in a garage of canvases, reeking of oils

I see the Mechanic covered black in grease with rough scarred hands

I see the preacher clad in Armani before an awestruck throng of rubes

Show me what you have and I will show you what you worship

I see the Surfer, sandy tied to longboard.

I see the Addict shaking, lighter in hand.

I see the preacher in his megachurch of crystal.

Show me what you have and I will show you what you worship

I see the Librarian and a sea of books

I see the Scientist and a mountain of data

I see the preacher and his multi-media global empire

Show me what you have and I will show you what you worship

I see the writer with not much more than this poem

I see the monk with faith, a robe, a hard floor to sit on.

I see the preacher with his giant piles of other people’s cash.

Show me what you have.

Show me what you have.

Show me what you have and I will tell you

Adam

God knew Adam before he was born. He knows everything, so this was not a surprise.

Controlling time and space as he does, He pulled Adam aside, touched him by the finger
as is commemorated and asked him if he was prepared for the task ahead of him. God
showed compassion to Adam, because, despite the current evangelical opinion, God
wasn't a bad person. He just wasn’t a person. At all.

God gave Adam a choice. Such as it was. God gave Adam a choice.

God spoke. God asked:

Adam,

said God, in his most person-like persona:

I will make you the first man. The only man for a while. And the fleeting fame therewith.

It will go badly. You will die. Bad choices will be made. Blame will falsely fall. All would
have died anyway, but all subsequent death will be blamed on you. The original.

Your sons will be murderers, victims, and excuses. You will bear a world so corrupt it needs
be reconstructed and redone over. Millions drowned. World rid of your hateful offspring
by baptism of all but eight. A Baptism of no further breath… Then the whole world will start
over with the same exact awfulness. A flood proven pointless.

Generations upon generations will issue from there. It will not go well. There will be pain.
And all of it will date back to you. All of that pain will in some way I suppose, be yours to
bear.

There will be still-births. Hope snuffed out by me and blamed on you. So often that it won’t
be talked about. Children, all, smited by my righteousness but mostly by my whim. And no
mortal knowing the difference of the two. As if they might matter. Blamed on you.

And then, my dear Adam. Oh, you do not know what this is yet. My greatest joke on you
perhaps.
But it is called war. And what a waking nightmare that is my friend.
(For Adam was God’s friend. As I’ve said. God is not a horrible person. It’s just that he is
not a person…)

War my friend. This will be worse than all of it. You will have millions of children! Oh
glorious day! Who would not want this?  But then they will kill each other! Oh! Will they
kill each other! Millions will kill each other! With the Jawbone of an ass. Then with a
sling full of stones.Then sword and sword and sword and sword… Arrows and arrows.
Bullets and bullets, then bombs and bombs.

Not always in my name. True mostly in my name.  But not always. I shall take solace in that,
though solace means little to me. I made solace for you, but not nearly enough of it.

There will be crusades where prisoners are taken and days upon days are spent executing
them with swords, one by one, because they can not be fed and hatred would deem that
even if they could, they wouldn’t be. Blood. On sand. On water. On the richest loam and
over the most fervent crops. For every excuse the landscape gives, ten times that much
violence. It is not the land that makes the bloodshed, it is your children, Adam. Your children
shall kill and kill and never be worthy of me or the conversation we’re having right now.

And have I mentioned Famine? And Pestilence? Your children will think it cliche, but they,
with War and Death will eternally be there. They shall ever ensure that only the pettiest,
the greediest and the self-servingest of your children shall survive. Sure, some will figure
out what math and logic are, but that will only make the other deaths more tragic..
Twenty-thousand years of illogical pain before logic is even invented. And all that that
discovery will give your children is more shame. More shame than your eternal soul will be
able to bear.

Oh! And! said God. And and and and and!

Have I not mentioned the gas chambers? The genocides? Do I even need to?
Are you still even listening at this point? And such will happen over and over and over
again… Your children who are different than your children killing your children who are
different than your children...

Cain killing Abel six million times. Abel killing Cain six billion more.

Hatred, hatred, hatred. Busloads of children on a bus destroyed in an instant by bombs
they never saw coming. Bombs that they never imagined existing. Babies. Born to the
wrong place. Babies born to the wrong time. To the wrong “race?”  But they are your babies,
born to your Earth. It is not a good world Adam. It is no world you want.
Said God, as human as he could be, though not being human, he couldn’t be.

Adam my dear Adam,

I have little hope for your children.

I see all that is and can be.

Adam, I don’t see any chance for your children.

Adam, I don’t see any future for your children

Adam, I don’t see any one thing that can possibly save your children.

So tell me Adam. Said God  (who was not a bad guy,though not a guy.)

Will you take on this task? Will you be the first man?

Knowing all I have told you. Knowing the past, present and future. Will you be the
progenitor of humanity and all the doom it entails? Will you make this bargain?

Will you take this on?

And, after only but a moment’s unnecessary thought...

Said Adam:

“If you throw in LAUGHTER... you’ve got a deal….”

THE END
Thanks for reading.
-winlar