20181031.0430

Of all the things that frighten on this day,
Or mimic doing so in form of play,
The scariest is, as I will ever say,
The Stupid God that I would keep at bay.
In costume and in mask, we may cavort
And act in silly ways without report
Of deeds our later goodness a retort,
But still, we should not Stupid God exhort
Unless it is to from all places flee
And find a place where it alone can be
And us alone leave, that we may find glee--
‘Tis the only good from Stupid God to see.

20181030.0430

However much we might want to upbraid
Those who under influence have stayed
Of Stupid God and been by it betrayed,
We do ill not to think ourselves afraid
That we will come to be those thus arrayed,
Of the same sort as those at whom we’ve bayed,
Mongrel hounds whose fears are not allayed
By all the noise that canine throats have paid
In tithes to other gods.

20181029.0430

I have some seen that have sought after care,
And, doing so, have heart and mind laid bare,
Opening their secrets to the air,
Where I have read and heard them.
They know themselves to have been sore oppressed,
And the results of that, they would address,
Their inclinations that way to suppress,
Though they won’t be free from them.
I’ve seen no few who’ve struggled on in vain,
Failing in ways they could well explain
And giving as excuse an old refrain,
And I want to rebuke them.
The Stupid God’s temptations offer much
That many people often prize. As such,
The Stupid God makes of itself a crutch,
And doing so, ensnares them.

20181028.0430

I know that some serve Stupid God without
Knowing what that service is about;
That some are led astray, I do not doubt,
But think instead that most are led that way
And into folly accidentally stray--
For which oversight we all must pay.
Few are those who know well what they do
And, knowing, still will see the actions through
That only work to wright for us all rue.
Let’s stand against them, now, and fists upraise,
And strike them when they acclaim and praise,
And keep on doing so throughout our days,
Though knuckles bleed and bones begin to crack.
Let us ever fight to push them back!

20181027.0430

I wonder if my work to write in verse,
In measured lines and rhyming to rehearse
My objection to the foolish curse,
Is itself made but to offer praise
For Stupid God to govern all my days
And ragged awkwardness put on my ways.
I know enough to know that I am prone
To folly, laid out as a cobblestone
By hubris, and that I am not alone,
But knowing that I thereby often fall
Neither wisdom nor ease gives at all,
But rather serves to me wholly appall.
Yet still am I brought low, or brought to heel,
Perhaps more easily that I thus reel.

20181026.0430

At times, it seems that every deed is done
For Stupid God, and even those begun
As works that seek that damnéd force to stun
Will always turn to idiots uphold.
No wonder, then, that they grow often bold
Who to the Stupid God themselves have sold
And often get but pittance as their price
For making themselves willing sacrifice.
No deed of arms, no softly phrased advice
Can wisdom bring to such as would thus do,
Who would do things that others come to rue
And count no cost if it would see them through
To what they claim is victory--and I
Can do no more than shake my head and sigh.

20181025.0430

Rains may fall and slowly lave away
The very stones and a long drought allay
As they the creeks and rivers cause to swell;
The churning waters’ warning most heed well,
But some will think to brave the sudden streams
That rise in ways that linger in bad dreams
For years and decades after they have passed.
However brief the time that has elapsed
Since last one did and was swept downstream dead,
Someone or other will take into head
The thought that rain-swelled streams can be well crossed
And find themselves by land-bound tempest tossed,
A sacrifice to Stupid God thus lost
In terminal baptism.

20181024.0430

It may be thought strange that I
Who am no man of faith
By my own admission often stated
Would offer up such hymns as these
In acknowledgment of the divine
Even if only to avert its attention
Or excoriate it
And it would not be wrong to think so
But I am more like Thomas
For I have seen the scars
And stuck my fingers in
And I regret it
It is not faith to report on what has been observed.

20181023.0430

It is not only in
Great gray galumphing things
With flapping ears and long noses slithering
That the Stupid God’s adherents cloak themselves,
Though they seem proudest of being so who do,
Trumpeting that they know not
And seek to undermine those who would know,
And they seem most to align themselves with
Trampling others under,
For which reason it is well to be wary of them.
Those who would clothe themselves otherwise
Should be careful to ensure
That the detergent in which they wash what they wear
Does not cause a reaction such
That they become braying jackasses only.
Perhaps it is better
To wash all such emblems away.
Many do not do well to align themselves under such totems.

20181022.0430

Shambling through its dance, the Stupid God laughs,
The braying wheezing along the winds without
Such signs of perfidy as would attract attention.
No curdled milk, nor cast calves, nor withered crops on bough and vine
Announce it. But that it is unmarked makes its evil more
Not less, and that it is unintended--
Because the Stupid God is unable to intend,
Even if its small-handed avatar is
Or the small-minded followers thereof
Who prove the Prince of Fantasists’ words
“To whom only the squalid sounds strong”--
Makes it not less perilous.

20181021.0430

Who calls the tune to which the Stupid God lurches?
Whose hands clap out the cadence to which its feet fall,
Rhythm neither syncopated nor regular enough to swing?
What voice sings the cracked tune,
What lips wind the horns, what fingers work upon them,
To make disjointed melody and awkward harmony
And hungover, pounding bassline,
To which the Stupid God brokenly gyrates?

20181020.0430

There are temptations in old saws,
Thoughts that they still cut,
Although their teeth are worn down;
They must have lasted so long,
Been passed from hand to hand,
Because they still excel at the work
For which they were designed and built.
But that presumes those who’d use them now
Know what was in the maker’s mind,
And it presumes that those who’d use them now
Have wood worth cutting,
And in such presumptions as in other places
The Stupid God dances jerkily.

20181019.0430

It is no easy task to put off the force of the Stupid God
And there is rebuke in doing so for ever having put it on.
The recollection of folly is no pleasant thing,
A hair-like cactus spine that irritates only when exposed again
Or brushed by hand now opened and active,
But not when holding still and idly kept.
It is no wonder that many will not act,
The less so when there are no tweezers handy,
And any action serves only to drive the slender spine further in
Where what damage it may do cannot be seen
And may well not pass the threshold of feeling
But is still done.

20181018.0430

I early rise each morning and I make to face the day,
Going through my morning motions in a common way,
Taking time as I have chance to raise my voice and say
My prayers against the Stupid God in small hope to allay
The ruin wrinkled avatars of citrus and small hands
And those who follow after them will work in many lands
In which I am obliged to dwell by the strait commands
Of limited resources such as few will understand
Because they do not care to look about them. Did they so,
They would perhaps have to confront what they’d rather not know,
And in the confrontation have to face the long sorrow
That now their constrained consciousness can too well keep below
The threshold of their notice--where I yet only peek
Because I know that, to face it, I am far too weak
And know not where I ought to go if such strength I seek
To do more to combat the ills than offering critique.

20181017.0430

The question of evil is one that persists,
Asked in a time now lost in the mists,
And many’s the questioner who thereby insists
That the question of evil sets as naught good.

The question the Stupid God calls us to ask,
Not because we are by it giv’n a task,
But by its existence the demand is unmasked,
Is whether it can allow smarts.

20181016.0430

The question to be posed is this,
And answered it must be:
How does invoking Stupid God
Urge for it to flee?
For even sending it away
Requires for it to be,
And being, it will come again;
It has, it’s plain to see.
Is it wisdom thus to use
What we’d rather not be
But seems will ever be with us,
Or is it grand folly?

20181015.0430

If, Stupid God, you must in this world be,
Then, again, I ask you go from me,
But now, I ask, as well, that you light on them
Who would seek to work against me.

Turn their ankles, that they may not advance.
Flash in their eyes and stymie thus the glance
That they would turn on me to my despite.
Thwart those who would work against me.

Din in ears that seek to hear my word
Only to against me undeterred
Advance their works and work to my despite.
Thwart those who would work against me.

Strike the hands such that the fingers bleed
Of them who prefer to no reason heed
Or even fairly judge, as is not right.
Thwart those who would work against me.

20181014.0430

Amid the old pages of Exeter’s book
Riddles are ready for reading by all
Who hear the old wisdom, hard now to gain
In days thought diminished, dark anymore.
When seeking solace against the Stupid God,
Is it good to gather that ‘gainst it the struggle
Long yet has lingered, not yet lost or won,
Or sends it forth sorrow, seeing it thus?

20181013.0430

It is no valor, acting in such ways
As to the Stupid God affords the days,
The nights, the weeks, the months, the years it prays
To gather up a cult culled from a horde.
But it is cowardly to have ignored
The way in which too many have outpoured
Libations and anointments to raise on high
A thing that would to them justice deny.
It would their better thoughts gladly belie
And render them no better than the beasts,
They spurn, or worse, since animals at least
Do but their kind, though gory be their feasts.
But Stupid God’s adherents do no less
Than sloppy animals to leave a mess.

20181012.0430

I seem into the wilderness to rant
Until, breath gone, I stop and stand and pant,
And others look on, blithering in cant
They scarcely understand, and I do not.
Yet I by words they speak am surely caught
And guided where they hope I will be taught
To worship, as they do, though I defy
The Stupid God, its salvation deny.
The world to that salvation gives the lie,
For if it true is that the world is saved
Though it remains both ruined and depraved,
Then to no end is that salvation braved.
If bravery has the present state thus made,
Then cowardice is how we should have stayed.

20181011.0430

Against the Stupid God does little vigilance suffice.
If lapsing but a moment, it enters in a trice
And strips from minds their cunning, takes flavors from the spice
That still must flow
Though few may know
Where it will go
Again.

No one can stand a vigil that must endure without end;
The most noble of guardians on others must depend
To ensure charge’s safety and the post defend.
It must be so
That they must go
Though they sorrow
Again.

The body, being bounded, cannot help but ever fail,
And Stupid God takes others’ failures’ moments to prevail.
Though some against the advantage angrily will rail,
Such cocks’ crow
Does swiftly go
Where none do know
Again.

20181010.0430

The new is often held to blame
For Stupid God’s increased acclaim,
But praise has been heaped on that name
Since words first were spoken.

When script arose, it was decried
As means to memory deride;
In print, a threat to script was spied.
Old fears were re-woken.

No pixelated word will do
More to give Stupid God its due
Than media the people knew
Before they thought things broken.

The followers thereof abound
Both walking on and under ground;
They have always been around
And ill still betoken.

20181009.0430

I think back on my days within the ivory tower--
Hiding in its basement, sure, but still within--
And think back on my thinking that it could lead to power
If I but knew how I ought to begin.

I shaped my mind as iron is shaped when it’s made into steel
And given a sharp cutting edge,
But no sword was it that I came to wield--
More cutters for a hedge.

I still do try to prune that bush that grows across my way.
It grows more rapidly than labor goes,
A tangled thatch becomes in disarray,
As Stupid God well knows.

20181008.0430

I do not praise what others praise when I it folly find;
When I know it is folly, I cannot arrange my mind
To overlook its foolishness. I cannot be so kind
To something that to service of the Stupid God does bind
Those who hold it in esteem--yet I cannot unwind
The bindings that are set upon them, that many have entwined.

I sorrow for my lack of skill, and for them, I have grieved
Who by their bindings are from much that might be good bereaved.
Stronger hands than mine must work ere they will be retrieved;
Stronger words than mine must speak if they will be believed
Against the powers that array to keep them all deceived
In landscapes intellectual that are now all upheaved.

I cry out in the wilderness that once was settled well
Ere Stupid God’s more full emergence, at which reason fell.
I cry out for a savior who can silence the death knell
That now rings across the world, so far as I can tell,
And some are deafened by it, or seem so just as well,
And hear only the clarion that calls them them to sell.

20181007.0430

Turn your face away from us, O, Stupid God, we plead,
For that, of all your blessings, is the only one we need.
Look away from us; our prayer thus to you, heed.
Save us from a sermon that will be but one more screed
Ranted out by those who long for us in greed
And want for us to them to reason’s power cede.
Go away from us in haste, and to elsewhere proceed.
Turn your face away from us, O, Stupid God, we plead.

20181006.0430

The wrinkled citrus avatar the Stupid God commands
Is working to put power into the Stupid God’s hands
And thereby wreak more ruin across the faces of the lands
Until, distracted, people yield to all of its demands.
Against that damnéd deity, too small a group still stands,
And that divided by concerns into still smaller bands
That will too soon be blown away as if so many sands
Unless they are, by pressure, made into stronger stone
Which will allow them to endure longer than alone
They otherwise would stand and skills, resisting, hone--
But for their faults it’s wondered if ever they’ll atone,
Unless it is to face that god that, even now, does drone

20181005.0430

Yet though I struggle still to find a voice,
To make that struggle is, for me, no choice;
It is in labor long that I rejoice,
And ease gives me no ease when work’s to do.
Though I still struggle, I will bear it through
Until it’s done; I otherwise would rue
The time I’d spend in being at my ease,
Lying idle as others well might please.
I know that working so is a disease
With which the Stupid God’s infected me;
No cure for it is placed where I can see,
So I know I will not from it be free.
Yet I can turn that illness to my gain,
As I in verse by showing might explain.

20181004.0430

On days like these, I struggle to words find.
For writing verse, I am in too poor mind;
Few riches do I gain from muse unkind,
And miserly has inspiration been
For me when I have sat to put my pen
To rhyming words in rhythms yet again.
Too near events have touched me these past days,
Reminding me of all the many ways
That I have failed. My guilt now me betrays,
As well it might. I do deserve no less,
And sins in plenty am pushed to confess,
Their stream from my mouth filling pit with cess--
For I have been as Stupid God would see
Me and too many others come to be.

20181003.0430

It would appear that this is the 2,000th post to this webspace. That is has taken more than eight years to get to this point is probably not something I ought to celebrate; I've not been nearly so diligent a writer as I should have been and should still be. But I have kept going, and I am here, now, and that's something, right? I want it to be so, at least.

Aside from the note that this is the 2,000th post, I've not got anything special upon which to comment. For me, life presses on as it has for some time, now. My family and I are well, which is worth much to me but is not particularly newsworthy. We continue to work at the jobs we have, and we continue to make less money doing so than we would like to have be the case--but those, too, are commonplaces. Ms. 8 thrives, and I am happy about that--but I recognize that I am so because I am her father, and other people are not, so they will not be as happy about it as I am.

I expect that my hymns against the Stupid God will continue for a time. There is ever reason to sing such songs, even if the verse grows disjointed and the tune broken and ragged. But if it is all I can do to hinder the spread of others' obeisance to that hateful deity, then I will do it, and if not gladly--for who can be happy, seeing what I see and being able to do so little to make things otherwise?--then at least diligently and with ongoing intention.

20181002.0430

The hold that Stupid God has tight on me
Does also mandate that I ever be
At work to earn what should be given, free,
And not demanded as ongoing fee.
If life I have who did not for life ask,
Then keeping life should not oblige a task
Be done, yet some will call it glory, bask
In needing work, and fill Stupid God’s cask.
Too many deeply drink the offered draught
And in the drinking render themselves daft,
Begin the antics at which some have laughed
And some have wept, who suffer them abaft.
Against those who such spirits will imbibe
No effect comes from a mere diatribe.

20181001.0430

I know that everyone enjoyment needs;
It is on such that effort often feeds,
Though I’m too seldom one who that word heeds,
As many who’ve been close to me can say.
I know I ought to work without delay,
And only after working should I play.
Yet such a hold has Stupid God on me
That I a way to working less oft see
Than is such as the case had ought to be.
I languish thus and ever lab’ring seem,
Or so I’ve known those near me oft to deem,
Their worried words an ever-present stream.
But if I labor not, they do not eat
Whom I well love, yet ill I that task meet.