Please forgive them Lord I beg, they know not what they do,
those monoliths, those cold eyed men who play,
who sport with mortal hearts and lives as pawns upon the board,
while subalterns salute, contend, obey.
Platitudes and somber faces plead for our compliance,
the pixels show recurring gravity,
while plastic bags convey the husks of ones we used to know,
who’re lost to primal base, depravity.
God’s image walks the earth it’s said, but where’s God’s clemency?
His love and mercy, refuge for the poor,
are we deserted, lost, condemned to cower constantly,
while hatred, greed and power causes war.
© Daniel Lake, 2014
Image: By Voice of America News: Scott Bob report from Azaz, Syria. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Review
I wondered what you would come up with now the time is approaching when we remember those who have died and those who continue to die. Soldiers fighting today are not conscripts they haven’t been snatched from their homes to fight against their will, as happened in the past.
During the time of the Crusades this country’s kings went to the Holy Lands to convert those living there to Christianity. Conversion by the sword. If one believes in the teachings of the Bible conversion was to be through preaching and teaching and showing by example a better way of life.
Now radical Muslims want to convert by the sword and we are shocked and disgusted. As for the Spanish Inquisition the mind boggles at what inhumanity one human can inflict on another for any reason let alone in the name of religion.
There has always been war and for the most part we were ignorant of the reality of it all until the two world wars and film and photography brought it, in all its gory detail, into our homes via newspapers. Now we have TV and the Internet and are aware of it on a daily and hourly basis.
As the world’s resources become less, be it oil or water, mankind will fight for survival and the ones with no conscience or empathy for their fellow man will be the victors.
God gave us free will, how we choose to use it is up to us individually and collectively.
Patricia Curtis