Babylon | Teen Ink

Babylon

January 29, 2011
By StevenG SILVER, Wexford, Pennsylvania
StevenG SILVER, Wexford, Pennsylvania
9 articles 0 photos 0 comments

Favorite Quote:
"The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success..." - Bruce Feirstein


Sing goddess, the rage.

The Whore of Babylon sits upon her seven-headed beast
of button-down leadership. She is the tank,
trampling all paper-bag toting protester wannabes that feel the need to make their
presence known, shopping not for food, but lost innocence.
She is the vulture holding arrows in one hand, and an olive branch in the other.
She sets the desert asunder,
groping for every last bit of slick liquid currency
that turns leaders into tyrants,





men into victims.


Sing goddess, the fire.

Iron hawks circle above
the carcass of a Frankenstein democracy
splayed out in the sand
while its women and children are burned in their homes
without discretion.
A vitriolic scent to match their sickly starving footprints

emblazoned on the stucco floors of their perpetual nonexistence.
A nuclear shadow in the shape of Eve herself.
They say they are the protectors,
but when the protectors can save us from everything but themselves,
the only thing we have to fear





is fear itself.



Sing goddess, the struggle.

We fight the good fight,
but often the quest for good lends us to evil.
But how do you fight an enemy that doesn't exist?
The whore searched her entire life for the man with the bazooka in his closet,
as he waited for the right time to use it.
And when he finally did, the world went up in arms.
The whore destroyed his home,
killed his children,
raped his wife,
and put a price on his head, attached or otherwise.

But the damage was already done.
Nonetheless, the whore sat in her marble edifice
and announced her venerable cause—one that served no other purpose than to shroud her subjects in a thin veneer of infinite complacency:



Adam himself adorned in an iron helmet

Embossed with a red crucifix

Marching on the holy land

For the Great Crusade towards which we have striven

These many months…
There is only one solution,
One solution
One solution
One solution
One final solution

Launch codes entered.
Roger that.
We are go for launch.
Roger that.
Turn the key.
Roger that.
Saddle up, Pickins.
Roger that.
The bird is away.
Roger that.
No turning back now.
Roger that.
Godspeed, world…

Roger that.



…Sing goddess, the sorrow.

The whore saw the rolling golden dunes
turned into badlands at her cry.
turned into wastelands at her call.
The sensual smell of cordite washed over her in waves, carried upon the firestorm winds blowing from the west,

mingling with the sweetly caustic scent of corpse.
The last echoes of detonation begin to fade from the ears, but never the minds.
Never the minds.
Never minds.
Nevermind.

the whore smiles and clutches her
shade and ill-gotten
cash.


Sing goddess, the end.
When you salt their lands, is the victory sweet?
The whore has gained everything,
and nothing at all.


The author's comments:
Sing goddess, the struggle.

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