Religious delusions haven't changed much since I wrote the poem below. Since the early 1990s we have seen countless religiously motivated killings in the form of suicide bombers, the 9/11 attack, abortion clinic bombers and doctor shooters. Cult suicide is a tremendous waste of human life and potential. Of course it can't occur without blind faith. Heaven's Gate followers believed these things because their LEADER told them so. Just one more little reason to never subscribe to a religion of any sort.
this not-so-empty darkness, her restless
children ache to dance down galaxies,
chase cosmic winds on callused primate feet.
Unsatisfied as voyeurs, 39 webheads queued
at Heaven's Gate, backpacks at the ready,
humming at the window, eating tapioca.
They clutched plastic, vacuous and opaque,
waited for data retrieval, personal uploads
facing unrecoverable error, depression
deferred in bunk-bed suburban stillness, escape
velocity for the purple-shrouded dead.
They hardly knew their Mother.
Bury them in her darkest loam,
rich compost of stars.
Bury them in her darkest loam,
rich compost of stars.
April 6, 1997
©1997 M. M. Walker
©1997 M. M. Walker
I was thinking about the ever expanding galactic structures of space and the even more convoluted eddies of the human mind when I drew this. As with all my digital drawings, it has been manipulated electronically in a host of programs over the years.
