On the ides of March

I, too, brutally stabbed you,
for being better than i — now
peace and reason rule instead;
but hope, dear God, has fled!

Q&A

Must i beg you into existence?
Have you vanished out of spite?
Or do you still relish sacrifice,
insist on a bit of faith? Perhaps
you are deaf, or gone to pee.
Here i lay dying, and you taunt
—me—with silence!

Do not presume to know me:
I am not the god of your fathers,
nor will i trade life for faith.
I will save you,
and shatter your existence;
I will grant you joy and peace,
by destroying your mind.
I am the god you crave
but cannot bear; for now
I will kill you, kindly, and transform you,
—and be.

An allegory of the Christian faith

Your soul must accept that it was conceived and birthed in your body, through language or culture, by an alien power. It has grown up, becoming strong and knowledgeable, having learned to live well in this world. But now it must die. It must submit to the will of its creator and be violently torn from all its desires, emotions, feelings, wills and thoughts, from everything it was. It must pass through the excruciating pain of surrendering its own craven existence and agree to be destroyed. When its final clinging fear has been crucified, when it has lain dead and absolutely empty, then it will be raised up by the same power that created it. And so it will realize that you are the multitude that conceived your soul and at the same time its newest member: a liberated, immensely more powerful person.

On numerology

The monkey was the smartest of all the animals. One day, dividing up a bunch of bananas amongst es friends, e noticed there were as many bananas as fingers on a hand and as friends around him. And so e counted: one, two, three, four, five…! So enamoured was the monkey with es new ability, that e began counting whatever was at hand: trees, eggs, ants, other monkeys, crocodile teeth (carefully), etc.

When the toucan found a whole bush of berries, the monkey insisted on counting them first before anyone ate them, but there were so many that by the time e was done, the berries were all smushed and rotting. However, such minor setbacks disturbed the monkey not at all.

For the most part, the monkey’s counting prowess was quite welcome and helpful, whether in distributing bananas, counting the number of paces to the next watering hole or playing hide and seek. That the monkey now staunchly refused to do or eat anything that couldn’t be methodically counted was simply dismissed as the whimsical habit of a superior mind.

One day the eagle swooped down from the sky to raise the alarm: a great wind could be seen in the east blowing towards them! Everyone must find a hole to take shelter in! But the proud monkey refused to climb down from the tree top, proclaiming that the wind didn’t really exist because it couldn’t be counted! Sadly, whether the storm was real or not, when the animals finally climbed out from the safety of their holes, none was ever able to find even one monkey.