Gearing Up for January, Poem #1

Our gods fell apart
(November 2005)
Josh MacLeod

Our gods fell apart and we’re just trying to fix them,
It’s just like Humpty Dumpty, not some kind of sin.
And we never ate them, no, but the world
The world devoured them and like so many birds
They’re going extinct: why do you think the eagle is bald?
There’s so much worry and so much fear
Hair falling out without any hope of cure.
And they said, “The gods are dead.” That’s what they said.
“So yours are too, it’s true,” they said with voices like lead
Showing us archaeological machines all the while
I wish I could forget the way that they smiled.

They say it’s true and we have to believe
Our gods died but we’ve been deceived before
No one anymore likes to recall the old false gods
And no one seems willing to give us the odds
They smile, they always do, and say odds change the odder
And the odded, and they say things like ma’am and sir.
And they seem so very formal and sound so very polite
That we feel we’re wrong and never right
For asking what seems to make sense,
If the new gods are their science.
And they obfuscate with waves
And particles, debates, and delays:
They talk so much, they say nothing, they never cease
In the saying of nothing, sounding just like priests.

So we’re walking down a street
Where fact and fancy meet
We tried to tell them our gods aren’t dead
“They’re only sleeping we believe,” we said.
They’re only sleeping and you can’t make
Us think they’ll never again awake
When your madness runs its course
They’ll be waiting for better or worse.
We’ll embrace our gods again
In the darkness be completed by them
And all of you who kill our dreams,
See the future in your dark machines,
And claim it will be bright
Just because it’s filled with light:
Even you don’t know whether
We’ll put our gods back together,
Despite your mocking laughter
All that really ever matters
Is that we worship them, and need them
And want only to love them
Because all the wonders of
This world of yours can’t give us love.