Platitudinous Religiosity.


Platitudes abound,
Recitation, scripted by so many Sunday mornings
laboured beneath the gaze of pulpit voices,
or by the fading sight of twilight shades
upon a yellowed page from His Good Book.

Cascading words fall about my ears
shifting to form or reassure some "truth" which might
stain certainty or distinction to these tattered lives,
Hoping that by their wishful proclamation
no sacrifice by moral right would be for naught
nor suffering be endured without substantive gain.

What faith is this? That clings so tightly
to the measures of ancient mystic poets,
that were their utterances shown as dust
All meaning would fade into darkness,
and chaos would surge back across our countenance
an unstoppable terror,
     deafening all comprehension without remorse.

Fragile faith it is, that by the dislocation
of that written past
Belief itself might be cast off - or by its rigid refusal
to bow before the breath of windward time
show itself a shadow's shadow, unyielding unto the death;
Our death, within the ceaseless epochal flow.