< Volume II: Issue 2 >
Asking God to Change
by Robert King
I. Honk If You’re Guilty
On the raucous road to hell or heaven,
everyone stands trial. A black sheep,
I pled not sure, and the judge hammered
my life as contempt because uncertainty
is not piety. So I drew my own map
of the world, removed all the borders,
erased the points of power.
But there were too many holy roads to repave
and too many signs I could not argue
with along the way. I got no answer
when I asked a Yield sign why?
Signs save lives they say. I say they
herd the flock toward a final shearing.
Ahead is a toll gate run by hawks without change.
Ahead is the chicken of my last meal
and the vulture with its ear to my heart.
II. Saying Grace
I am too curious a man.
I no longer see myself in the mirror
because I have asked all the questions
I can answer. So I pray to the wind
and stars, hoping they know
why life and death belong to the same
vicious circle, why they are just different
sides of the same coin and have the same
value—the sums of nothing more
than profit and loss—why everything
has a price, why the fuel of every creature
is the daily killing and eating of other life.
Star scholars say everything of matter
is made of stardust
Then we are all cannibals, I say.
My own hunger shames me.
To profit from life, I must eat before I am eaten
and say grace to God for this nourishing death.
This is truth, but pray for truth to change.
Pray we are God as God is us. We are in this
together, and it matters not if truth is God or Science,
nor which one Nature weds.
III. Allowing Food in the Courtroom
My development was arrested,
my path to knowledge brought before the judge.
Crossroads are illusions. The path
is a straight line or a circle, both leading
to an end or another circle.
Only curiosity can fly in any direction,
but there is a price to pay for even one question.
I hurl a prayer, a shot into the dark of space.
I hear its Doppler shift of wheels and hooves
stampeding around a black hole
that swallows it whole.
Can a simple question reshape the mind of God,
give Nature food for thought?
I pray that knowledge be our food,
I pray we hunger for light to a better way.
I pray we never get comfortable in our skins,
that our God will consider shedding his own.
We who never change make God old and set in his ways.
We auction our lives who never question God.
Too late, now my long silence hears the gavel
sentencing me to life without control.
Asking God to Change
by Robert King
I. Honk If You’re Guilty
On the raucous road to hell or heaven,
everyone stands trial. A black sheep,
I pled not sure, and the judge hammered
my life as contempt because uncertainty
is not piety. So I drew my own map
of the world, removed all the borders,
erased the points of power.
But there were too many holy roads to repave
and too many signs I could not argue
with along the way. I got no answer
when I asked a Yield sign why?
Signs save lives they say. I say they
herd the flock toward a final shearing.
Ahead is a toll gate run by hawks without change.
Ahead is the chicken of my last meal
and the vulture with its ear to my heart.
II. Saying Grace
I am too curious a man.
I no longer see myself in the mirror
because I have asked all the questions
I can answer. So I pray to the wind
and stars, hoping they know
why life and death belong to the same
vicious circle, why they are just different
sides of the same coin and have the same
value—the sums of nothing more
than profit and loss—why everything
has a price, why the fuel of every creature
is the daily killing and eating of other life.
Star scholars say everything of matter
is made of stardust
Then we are all cannibals, I say.
My own hunger shames me.
To profit from life, I must eat before I am eaten
and say grace to God for this nourishing death.
This is truth, but pray for truth to change.
Pray we are God as God is us. We are in this
together, and it matters not if truth is God or Science,
nor which one Nature weds.
III. Allowing Food in the Courtroom
My development was arrested,
my path to knowledge brought before the judge.
Crossroads are illusions. The path
is a straight line or a circle, both leading
to an end or another circle.
Only curiosity can fly in any direction,
but there is a price to pay for even one question.
I hurl a prayer, a shot into the dark of space.
I hear its Doppler shift of wheels and hooves
stampeding around a black hole
that swallows it whole.
Can a simple question reshape the mind of God,
give Nature food for thought?
I pray that knowledge be our food,
I pray we hunger for light to a better way.
I pray we never get comfortable in our skins,
that our God will consider shedding his own.
We who never change make God old and set in his ways.
We auction our lives who never question God.
Too late, now my long silence hears the gavel
sentencing me to life without control.
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