The Alabaster Stairs
By David Glenn Cox
The sun rises slowly through the broken windows and locked doors up the alabaster stairs to where time carries little meaning. These are congested days like rush hour traffic stacked end to end but have no destination and so we wander aimlessly clicking off time as time chokes back laughter at us. These missing years and missing times cracked and broken cups irretrievable and unreplacable.
The young and old alike cry out for mother but she can't answer and she can't help us now for it is too early for some and too late for others. We traverse the dark corners of time alone and must absolve ourselves for our sins for the churches are closed for renovation, closed for the new and improved, coming soon, happy meal salvations and tea party revelations.
Where the hero's shout nothing and cheer for emptiness and the crowd cries for more of everything with a double helping of nothingness. Where in communication there is only silence. Where the devices of communication isolate us from ourselves and protect us from thought and numb us to feeling anything at all. Where we kill without question, where we kill with high morals, where we kill from great altitudes, where we kill with dulled muted certainties.
Where the words of knowledge fuel the fires of intolerance fed to the masses as a cafeteria lunch. Simple ideas with a side of fries as the crow flies as the world dies with a moon pie. I'll ask again what about the children? What about your past? Would you trade with them now, would you do it all again? Do you still remember when we weren't afraid?
The silent revolution a sad parade where the judges in blood red robes condemn the innocent and the guilty just the same. The poor go to war and the wealthy go to retire where the children go to standardized tests that call themselves schools. Taught to close their eyes, to stand in a straight line, to read and write and most of all memorize. Taught to not question and taught to do as they're told to sing only the corporate songs and dance in corporate cloths.
Huddled around the campfires of sleeping bag mansions the truth is held like a lover adored. Shock and awe dreams of former warm days that seem so long out but cannot be measured in time in this frozen land that cries out silently and mumbles in shame. Sons and daughters cast out by the street corner Jesus busy setting up the money changers tables in the temple of coins. To sell doves for the sacrifice, for added security needs, for darker and darker deeds.
Dazed, muddled, dizzy and confused the multitude listen to the cardboard cut out of their choice. Promising more or promising less or higher or lower but delivering on nothing wrapped with anger or with bow. These paid pens blame you , you and yours. Your children, your needs are robbing them from their wealth with your disabling disease. Frustration, prostration, subjugation, alienation.
Their words have two meanings the twin sons of a knife blade while the truth is served ala cart. The truth is what they make it, the truth is as they tell it. The truth is as they serve it the truth is as they sell it. The mad hatter's progeny come to flesh as eons of evolution fall wasted on lying baboons as the crowd cheers as the crowd cheers as the crowd doesn't know what else to do.
So they wander darkly leading melancholy's children by the hand through the mall of fiasco and the bargain basement of despair. On sale, this week only, a once in a lifetime disaster sale. Funding cut by up to seventy percent, we've gutted the social safety net and passed the misery on to you. Where the wizard watches stock prices the emerald city is no more.
Police sirens call out your future as the church bells toll for war while the factory whistles cry out for no one. The holy smoke chokes us as the holy joke ropes us. Alms for the more, and more and more. Churches for the for the sick and churches for the schools, church with high TV towers, dare I say it? Fools! Of sacred text that's read in jest with rusted lines and broken parables. A breakfast served of of blood and bread salvation served to those already dead. While the living they must carry on as they hope for a wave of the wizards salvation wand.
The sunshine glistens on broken bank shards and the patient is not doing well. The patient needs a transfusion caught somewhere between heaven and hell. The minister takes the pulpit as the anxious crowd it swells the sermon is on moderation its saving will make us well! We must save the poor by not saving them we must save the rich by giving to them. We must save our cities by letting them crumble and the old by cutting them and the children by ignoring them.
The false idols teaching that to care is not to care of holy water stimulus sprinkled on an forest fire. Of bombs dropping on minaret spires or oil platform fires of hell unleashed on earth. A grand illusion, a fine solution, a forgone conclusion. The wealth of nations lost in vacant stares the wealth of kings buffered by quick repair as the wait for answers falls in blighted despair for only the sunshine still climbs the alabaster stairs.