Fuck God

Where was God when my Mom’s best friend’s son was killed in Vietnam? 

God had 4 million children starve to death that morning in January, 

He had no time for rescuing some soldier in a foreign land,

Now, his 21-year-old bones lie under a stark cross in a forgotten cemetery. 

Where was God when my dad took his own life?  

Oh, He was too busy burning down someone’s abode

And, left only some hypocritical Bible standing in the aftermath, 

While my dad went to eternal sleep in that descending zipcode. 

Where was God when he stole my best friend in my youth? 

Oh, He captured the Lombardi Trophy for the Raiders,

With a last-minute drive and touchdown, 

Left my buddy to die as a consequential crusader. 

Where was God when he killed my other friend in a car wreck?

A decent man who had three small children,

Left a widowed wife in lonely despair, 

And his parents were guilt-ridden. 

Where was God when my mom suffered a horrible death? 

As she lay in agonizing misery for six months,

Went blind and lost all hope, 

No God answered her dying grunts. 

Where was your God when Hitler torched the Hebes? 

The monster who overshadowed Satan himself with pride,

Sieg Heil to the newborn king,

A proud nation wilts to regicide. 

Where is your God when you need him the most?

Nowhere, my good friend,

Because he's a delusion that you've chased

To the end of the world and will never comprehend. 

Eden in Hell-4

 

     The heat wore down their attempt to get past ten miles a day because finding food supplies and water was of grave interest daily. Finding or scavaging every home for food and water was quite an adventure in itself, once they entered a booby-trapped home, a very sophisticated and elaborate home, and they later found out it belonged to a wealthy physician, and after nearly getting their heads blown off by shear luck because they both slipped and fell when the gun went off, they just left that house as it is, and they mostly just entered old vacant and decaying supermarkets, convenient stores, and drugstores. Huck kept his makeshift and trusty Geiger counter, virus tests, and water tests with him, and when they found any ramshackle drugstore that wasn't pilfered or purloined Huck would upgrade his tests because most vandals would just steal the drugs and canned food and leave whatever tests there. Huck and Dwayne never ate anything contaminated, they knew the danger of viral infections. 

     Dwayne found a picture in one of those fancy cases that showcased various oddities that most drugstores displayed at the checkout register. He picked it up, and it reminded him of his youngest child, Lily, who was his baby girl. Tears rolled down his face and Huck glanced over and rescued him from further melancholy and said, “Will be that check or cash?” 

     “Do you take credit?” Dwayne was laughing so hard returning the rescuing favor.

     “Let’s get the Hell out of here!” Huck had enough of that drugstore, it was empty except for those tests and a few other knick-knacks. 

     Dwayne led the way out of that town and knew those who were infected would soon surface at night because the heat only exacerbated their sickly condition. The lifespan of those infected was less than a week but those infected always wanted a cure and would seek out anyone for help. Nighttime was best spent deeply in the forest and far from cities and rural towns. 

     “Did you find any food?” Huck said knowing it looked dismal. 

     “Not a damn thing, Huck!” Dwayne blurted out and kicked up the dust at his feet in disgust. 

                                                          4

     

Eden in Hell-3

     Huck’s background in engineering helped him solve everyday problems. He cleverly Jerry-rigged a transistor radio from maroon scattered debris of various equipment they found along their journey. One morning Dwayne stumbled upon an old CD player that was over 70 years old with an odd assortment of musical discs from various dead and forgotten Artists. He carried with him a portable solar-panel electrical adapter that had several plug-ins. He fired up that old CD player and it blared out an old song from Pink Floyd, Shine On You Crazy Diamond; Dwayne immediately went back to his old university, and reminiscences soon plunder his ageless mind, and the time he met his wife, who turned him on to the old and forgotten musicians. He almost broke down in tears.

     Huck shouted out, “Damn, I loved that song!” He too was a musical lover of the decadence where arenas were once filled with bands and love before the wave of death viruses hit. 

     “I know, ain't it sublime?” Dwayne said with complete sadness because that world and time are no longer in existence. 

     “We better head toward the woods.”  Huck saw clouds of smoke coming from some vacant part of the city which meant infected humans. 

    Dwayne turned down the CD player, picked up and dusted off the twenty or so CDs and tucked them all in his backpack, and headed toward the wooded horizon. 

     Huck noticed the slightly compartmentalized tone of Dwayne’s voice and knew there was no time for weakness, they had an agenda and there was no time for mistakes. Death was always millimeters away. Nighttime was approaching and they had no food or provisions to nourish themselves. 

     Dwayne looked at Huck and said, “I guess it's Alice’s empty kitchen tonight, isn't it?”

      Both in unison cuckolded out a laugh heard for miles. When you're weak and hungry the body makes reparations to ward off the shock. These were trying times that no institute can train you to adjust to or survive from the retributions of death. 

                                                                    3 

The Gambles

 

I turn to God,

He laughed and turned me away,

I turned to the Devil, and He

said let's play.

For forty years I hid from the sun 

and cavorted into the night.

This macabre of black magic won 

over the righteous fight. 

But one day, I became old

and 

Eden in Hell-2

           Dwayne lost his family of four, a wife and 3 little girls, to the last global pandemic, the deadly virus of 2056 called Javari-01 that came out of the unexplored jungles of the Amazon. This virus swiped his family in 3 days and would have delivered him this fatal blow too if he wasn't away for 6 months working on a virus-resistant plant he and his partner were working on for years. Now, ghost towns stretch across the country, and many are ungovernable, unkept, and desolate. Huck and Dwayne met years ago while working together, Huck was an engineer helping out on virus-free sealed domes, for he too lost his family, a wife of 20 years, and 2 sons, not from any virus but from scavengers and renegades who murdered them for food and water. While both men have succumbed to tragedies, neither one ever talked about it. 

            Dwayne was peering out the window that overlooked the shambled and dead-forsaken town, they found an unravished bunker filled with tin food and expired drinking water, yet luckily it was all virus-free. Dwayne carried the blueprints of his bio-engineered virus-free plant food in the canister his wife gave to him on his 40th birthday, and he planned to utilize his company's laboratory located in California to finish up his work and possibly save mankind. The present time was staying away from the radical and armed militia that rarely bargained for anything other than food and water. 

          Our earth gave way, it was dying to put it mildly, and after years and years of drilling out its core to obtain antiquated fossil fuel, the fracking, the spills, and the drilling just fractured her globally, every water aquifer and water table was saturated and contaminated with oil residue of some sort and not to mention the deep mining of ores depleted her belly to fight back, the Earth’s oceans were littered with so much plastic there were miles and miles of it, mountains of plastic were forming, and the ozone was so thin you couldn't stay in the South too long due to the humidity and ultraviolet rays, the sun toasted every animal to a crisp, unless you were a desert-dwelling critter you were history. The only visible green life left was guarded by the Government. Beyond that, it was dog eat dog, every man for himself, if you were weakminded you perished quickly, and religion became obsolete and laughable, what caring God destroys his own Eden?    

     

                                                                     2 

          

Eden in Hell-1

 

Preface: Earth has become a refuge of sickness: plagues, bioengineered super viruses, and every surface disease known to man have infiltrated every nook and cranny of this decimated planet. Every water table is saturated with oil contamination, and our oceans are filled with so much plastic it has suffocated what aquatic life we had left into extinction. The Revelation is fulfilled. How did we let the 1% annihilate and destroy this planet with their greed? Now, survival for a day is the ultimate challenge for the remaining population that somehow escaped the travesties of destiny. The survivalists must defend their ground, water supply, and lives, and that is an everyday task at hand. This is the story of the families that fought every adversary. The year begins in 2076. 

                                                     Chapter 1

                                                      Genesis 

                                                  

          Huck looked at the time on his antique PC and it showed 11:47, he took a quick leak and tried to recall what time it was, and couldn't recall what he just saw. ‘Damn, I'm getting old,’ Huck mumbled to himself as he wandered into the old kitchen he was sharing with his old buddy Dwayne. The building they shared together was over 100 years old and still powered by boot-legged and outlawed coal. The Solar Industry took over everything and bought every politician who finally pushed the fossil industry into submission. Only the impoverished towns and rural areas subsidized the outdated smoking coal-firing plants. 

          Dwayne was eating some Armour potted ham on a cracker, and Huck laughed, “How are those chicken peckers and pussies you eating?” 

“What?” Dwayne smacked out of his mouth. 

  “That shit your eating on that salted cracker is ground-up chicken peckers and pussies, read the ingredients,” Huck uttered. 

          Dwayne picked up the Armour can and read out the ingredients: Mechanically separated chicken parts, pork, water, and salt. Contains 2% or less of mustard, vinegar, dextrose, sodium erythorbate, garlic powder, natural powders, and sodium nitrate. 

“Those separated chicken parts are combs, chicken feet, peckers, and pussies!” Huck spurted out laughingly as he turned and poured himself a cup of coffee. 

Matriarchal Love-Nonpareil

 

A Mother’s Vow to her children is the most

profound and divine link, she is above all a 

protector, provider, and giver of endless love.

Living on Kentucky time, kairos time, and God’s time, 

and the endurance of hellish hours in between, this prologue 

of unceasing questionnaires, the filament of sorrow, just

one fracture of uncertainty returns this

recollection in rancorous guilt. The blasphemy of 

Atropos for whom wreaked threadbare this grief, whose sever 

of life sheared more lives than one. God may forgive though 

a Mother sits patiently as the tempest that vents the carriage

of years between mother and son, the expanse of understanding 

and unbound love ‘tween kindred souls. This inseparable yoke

memorializes this gilded chain, plaited mementos enumerate and

grace this union for all eternity. Just one song can cultivate  

a thousand memories and one memory can effectively

canvas scenically season after season in mercurial symphony. 

Yet, one picture can powerfully dispatch a lifetime of sempiternal 

joy and agonizing melancholy. Just an afterthought to a loon, this 

crazy life, this prying catharsis, to reach the spirits beyond that 

which holds your child to all repressed memory, the dust collection 

of mortal thoughts and the wake of an existential crisis, to understand

the cosmic question of why? Fate rarely doles out forgiveness and reprieves. 

Anthony Craig was an extraordinary soul whose love for life 

superseded every modicum of God, his light outshined every  

glistening star in the celestial sphere, and his family is the prolific 

element that bond Earth and Heaven. His love will rest in

vigilance until his family reunites in that perpetual garden where

eternal bliss grows the evergreen of happiness. Within the mortal 

basket of hope lies the sacred breath of time and tears cloud and 

constitute the shattered remains without you, always remember 

Mom loves you. 

(In remembrance of Anthony Craig Lawrence, the loving father of Allie Marie, and

son of Mona Fay and Bruce Lawrence, may he never be forgotten.) 

- John Hardesty