By Casey Allen

PART II

OF LIES AND MEN: THE GREAT MISCONCEPTION OF THE SERPENT

Your givers of salvation will tell you a mythical devil tempted our ancestors

Thus condemning them to a life of suffering and shame

On the contrary, the serpent offered them a choice

The choice to be as a god

The ability to see the world as it truly is

To distinguish right from wrong, good from evil

To feel the purest of love and the blackest of hate,

for one could not exist without the other

This mythical serpent merely removed the blinders your givers of salvation are so desperately trying to force back upon you

Let it be so - peace be with your proverbial fathers and brothers

Your absolution can be bought for a small donation placed inside the collection basket

Let it be so - it is your choice to live as sheep

As creatures of reflex, of instinct and of habit

Lying, cheating and adulterating on Saturday

Only to play dress up on Sunday to beg forgiveness for your sins

These pastors, your masters, will ride your guilt to your casket

For they know as soon as next weekend comes you’ll be at it again

So long as you remain obsessed with your get rich quick schemes,

magic diets and plastic surgeries

Mortified by your own mortality and sexually transmitted disease

Transfixed by reality TV and celebrity magazines

Anything to gain what was not given at birth, or has since been found too difficult to earn

Lottery ticket handouts and game show dreams

The world must owe you a great debt of compensation for the suffering you brought upon yourself as a result of being so weak

Beauty no longer lies within the eyes of its beholder

You have given up this power to a society of vampires

It is not your blood,

but your approval, your acceptance and your unconditional jealousy they seek

This moral dilemma, this guilt-ridden infringement upon your devotion to forward progress is a manipulative man made masterpiece

A dogma created for those who are unwilling,

or perhaps just too busy to think for themselves

Created to enslave the very population it is advertised to save

Using the notion of heaven to escape from your own hells

In the name of your gods you kill

But in whose name, if at all, do you live?

Praises be to your almighty puller of strings

Write off the great tragedies of our times as his will

Let blind faith be the ultimate scapegoat,

or may I be struck down for the blasphemous ways in which I question such thing