The Promise

[YingFaOfAzureSky]

Life is diseased it always has and forever will be stuck in an endless tragedy,
The rotten core of a bitter heart left on a burning sleeve,
No more short-comings as the population dies in the rising tide of change,
The shallow existence living in between the in between; the shaded gray,
Just follow the leader into the pile of worthlessness and hate,

As the Martyr lays against the cross of lies and her blood begins stain our lives,
Just tune into the darkness and put your trust in the heart wrenching silence,
None of us plead on our knees howling like dogs "Forgive me, Father.."
While the true Believers whisper blending in with the crowd, "God loves and Jesus saves."
"Better to rule in Hell then serve in Heaven." the condemn sinners always say,

Tomorrow is just like yesterday empty and cold as we bleed our tears with razorblades,
So let us wallow in our sorrow and drink away our salvation of the pearly gates,
The festering ugliness underneath a so-called paradise..its glory a newed and worshiped daily,
We're clipping our wings not upholding to the hollow angelic promise,
Come let us dance with the Devil in the desolate night and be obscene if you please,
Cuz come tomorrow you can always repent and scream an Amen,

All you have to do is confess to me friends..
The misunderstood snake in the grass hiding behind the pretty mask,
She'll betray you like Judas with a kiss of deception and morbid obsession,
Starting to crave her addiction as the rosary begins to scorch her hands,
Her sweet seduction and numb belligerence too hard to resist; you follow her self-destructive path all too blindly smitten,

A scornful self-proclaimed Helen of Troy and set upon her narcissistic throne,
Watch her stumble and fall down the spiral of a twisted version of Wonderland,
The society starts its decadence all its citizens sickening their insides polluting themselves in their Angel's absence madness,
As we begin to deny and decay; we won't give up broken and cry mercy,

This is our eternal damnation of our paranoid conspiracy the lying karmic wheel,
We will take our last stand here as we fight our internal wars..
Another sadistic causality, another masochist murder against our numbers,
Its us against them our reflective philosophic selves...is this the promise of the end?

[Mookie Lugubrious]

I like the codependence of ingestion imagery and religious imagery. and i think this line is particularly effective:

The rotten core of a bitter heart left on a burning sleeve,

because the 'rotten core' part made me think of apples and eden, and forbidden desires. and the heart/sleeve reflex worked as well. it suggests that there was a sense of openness to others that was violated for whatever reason.

If you haven't already, read through all the prophesies of the Bible. Check out William Blake's 'The Marriage of Heaven & Hell,' and the Hypostasis of the Archons, which is an old gnostic text you might find interesting. But you're dabbling in a special sort of poetry called prophesy, and the tradition of those prophets and their bizarre lifestyles.

Prophetic texts are often visual metaphors, and use the image as a metanym for some greater context. So when Hosea (a minor Hebrew prophet) marries a Canaanite girl from the whoredoms, fathers three unusually named children, and she eventually dumps him and he's stuck with them, it supposed to mirror God's relationship to unfaithful Israel.

What is frightening about these prophets, is that they take on the identity of a symbol, and often they themselves are analogies for God. So they never act in their own best interests, and their function in society is didactic. They teach lessons, literally, and their medium is not words exclusively like a poet or writer, but sometimes experience itself. They are satirists and cultural critics, they make comments on society as a whole that are destined to be rejected as negative bullshit. They are outcasts who act like madmen. They exist on the fringe of society, and look at people from the outside in, an act of condescension.

None of this is good or bad, it sort of just is. It's the stuff of the motifs you're working with. apocalypse, prophesy. think of code too.

[YingFaOfAzureSky]

I am pleased that you liked my work and I shall have to check out William Blake's book next time I return to the library. However personally, I did not know that my poem was dabbling into prophecy's borderlines..not that I am not proud of The Promise's interpretation..I just feel that you nearly hit home so to speak.

As for those prophets of which you spoke of, I think I could arguably identify with them but I'm sure..most of us can at one point or another.