god

Creation Fail

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His god made him simultaneously strong and weak, I was told

Odd, wrong, meek, the surviving spouse at a funeral

Humourless as the miscellaneous bereaved

Stealing joy with an assortment of self-imposed rivalry.

Back in the day, he would frequent the library: determined, bold

Where, with dread, he would flick through the science he never bought

And as stars aligned

He continued to vacuum happiness

Buying only into the inexplicable biblical things

reserved for his kind.

I observed as I was ought:

Pretending not to read him

Pretending not to need him

Keeping quiet

In case of argument or riot

And because light was at a premium

His eager, bohemian child learned what to cherish

And as he perished, he knew he’d been had.

My father was the dullest dying star at the funeral for his universe

And with me as his nurse

There was no god to see that he was bad.

If a Book…

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If a book can drive people to build gold-dripping brick palaces in honour of an imperceptible sky-dweller
Or to melt wax and drape hatred over glistening, Christening altars
Then consider the power of fiction.
If a book can create and nurture mass hysteria for thousands of years, then consider the power of fiction.

If a book can drive people to kill or to keep:
To keep and punish and sacrifice
To sacrifice and ostracise and bully and excommunicate
If a book can invent such fantastic characters that even the inconceivable becomes believable
Then consider the power of fiction.

There, saints on pages say women must be silent
There, invented words would have you devote yourself to destruction
where wives and slaves submit to men
—Men who must not love one another—
Here, sacrifice your children unto this scripture:
And they saw that it was blood.

And still, its readers read—feeding hate
And still, they root for its main character
Through an aperture of death
Death masquerading as life
And still, its readers explain away horror as metaphor

And interpret and manipulate evil into excuses:

Free will and mysterious ways.
So today, embrace the power of fiction.
Embrace the power of fiction and keep writing.
Keep writing your own book
And perhaps one day
Writers shall unwrite The Bible.