! Islamofascists And Christofascists (And Israelofascists Too?) Poem by Michael Shepherd

Well, you’d expect them to hate each other,
since it’s the nature of the beast
and deep down they hate
all human beings, and hate themselves…
those who would impose their ‘righteousness’
upon their fellow men…

but the God who’s mercifully beyond all names
must look down in stunned incomprehension
when the faithful make division in their faith…
Catholics and Protestants, Sunnis and Shias…

for perhaps this is the greatest crime of all
against God: and if so, the Popes and Archbishops
should have said to their faithful a century ago,
love those who love Me, whatever path they take…
or My penalty shall be, that – plague on both your houses
in My house of many mansions – both your so-called ‘faiths’
which are but faith in your own human judgments rather than
your faith in Me – both shall be henceforth declared
apostate, infidel – oh ye who lack real Faith…

or if God could, would, should not interfere
as His inexorable laws work their justice out
and the ‘faithful’ slaughter one another
in a new Massacre of the Ignorants –

if not God Himself, then some latter Solomon
who might say the same; or devise
some sharper stirring of what’s left
of reason in those warring idiots –

something on an unreasonable par
with his threatened halving of that disputed babe,
such as, if you haven’t sworn brotherly love
on every holy book and holy shrine
within a month, I’ll toss this coin
with Allah’s name, or Jehovah, or Fid. Def. upon it …

and declare one party forever infidel
within my holy realm…

how obvious all this seems, to those of us
born free from ancient hates: they, bound
to man’s so foolish, idiot pride.. and the great betrayal
ever threatening, the treason of the clerics…