Hollowness

Embrace this gird that holds you captive
and helpless, we have no souls only dying 
bones and scarred flesh, we are abject mortals
and hope is an ancient curse written by no god,
heretical nonsense to believe any fairytale, alas, 
this trying interminable personal interrogation 
believing you’re special and privileged to an 
eternal flight with some god who refutably created
you from mud, beneath this speculum of submission 
where sinister after ominous preacher peculates your
bank account through some binding loophole of guilt
in the form of obligatory tithes, you’re an useful obligee 
who bows to superiority and who’s eviscerated and
emasculated by your own weakness, take ownership 
in your vestigial inferiority, become your own god on
this rapacious earth, ravens come not with welcoming
hymnal matins of praise, they come to peck out your
eyes and pockets, fall away from idiocy and ignorance
and idolize no one but yourself, for you were born to rot
and to be forsaken by death, you will die, you will be 
forgotten, only poets, inventors, and evil live forever. 
Immerse yourself for now, clothe your mind with 
knowledge, live for today, and stop all wickedness that 
invokes and provokes religious ideology, if you kill 
another in the name of some god, you have drawn 
Cain’s sword through your own heart. 

- John Hardesty 

 ©️Copyrighted 11/26/2019

The Wall

     The Muslims wail at the al-Buraq Wall,

where Muhammad caught flight upon some

white winged-donkey, where he was inexplicably 
lifted from the sacred Mosque and placed to
the farthest Mosque, Muhammad’s Mi’raj rules
their faith and all its sorcery; 
     The Hebrews sulk at the Ha-Kotel Ha-Ma’ aravi, 
where Jewish pilgrimage lament Roman’s destruction
and pray for restoration from the depths of mystery, yet
nothing stops them from rebuilding this war-torn temple;
     Two kingdoms separated by dividing phantoms who in return
have wrought nothing to them but misery and contempt, yet they
still unite in the faith of their deception, while mystery still 
surrounds them in louring hate for one another who break all
precepts, laws, and commandments, who rather live in warring 
death than in peace with mankind.


- John Hardesty