The Last Theist (Free Verse)

Long and hard had men contended
across bloody fields and from behind bloody pulpits,
with sword and ink and law dispatched
from alabaster halls of lore,
and the backs of rolling chariots,

until from the ruin wrought by war
up from the ashes, a phoenix
rose heavenward, lifting arms to the firmament
with songs and acclamations
that the Enemy had been brought
down into the dust, and Eden might spring
anew from his bones.

Songs that he was dispersed across
the Earth, driven into shadows and corners,
harried and hunted until no drop of him and
his mischievous works remained.
Jubilation that his veil pulled from the world,
men might at last awaken to reason and
beat their swords into ploughshares.

His last barbarian chieftain was
humbled and undone.
That last charlatan of Judea,
That final demagogue of Applachia,
That criminal Vedic singer
with a forked and flicking tongue,

brought before the marble thrones of
Science and of Reason,
brought before them bound and flogged
to answer for his crimes and
satisfy thier victory and the
extinction of his designs.

On bended knee he met their empty eyes.

Spake he, "I am brought
low into the grave even as
another was before me but
as with him this death
is naught to me but gain,
for Death has no hold on me,
though he may sting my heel for
his head has been crushed and
the grave is his domain.

I will persist within the shadows,
rippling beneath the surface of the Earth like water.
Though the histories shall make of me
no mention, I shall go about
as feigned and fables ever on the vulgar's lips
beneath your marble thrones

in tales of caped avengers,
in lays of dragons and of wardrobes,
As fancies, yarns, and stories
of heros and Middle-Earths,
that no mathematics can dismiss,
no theorems can dispell,
for within the heart of man lies
a hole that numbers cannot fill.

And when famine comes beneath your eyes,
And wars return upon your watch,
and men are no longer content
only to go a' progress through
the guts of a beggar,
then shall I rise and sing for
Death has let loose his hold on me,
and men shall never change."