crucified on the absurdity

Intelligence agencies and spin artists
scramble to figure out who I work for

the spy who came into your living room
and announced
You are sacrificing your children
to protect the oil interests of the elite
repressive kings
& myth addled misogynists

tiny holes in their cloak of lies
revels slivers of the sun


a Tutsi general refuses to give up his guns
until they know there won't be another
genocide
displays a cane with a silver eagle
like my belt buckle and our family crest
a button reading REBEL FOR CHRIST

Not on my watch
morphed into Not On Our Watch
Clooney raises millions for Dar fur
after I preached the issue
into your living rooms

once I spoke free and fierce
to the bugs in my apartment
now we spar from afar
my lips silenced by their constant intrusion
a self thinking activist in the free world
long ago awakened to the tactics
cops and spies use
to beat down the revolutionaries
before they can get to the revolt

I have shown you the
survailled world to come
why the laws must be just now
or we will jail ourselves
into a fascist state where straying
from your religion alone
will get you jailed

They put us in jail
tore out our hair
tortured their way threw a paranoid delusion
hurt the very people sent to save them
the unwitting ethicists
fighting the amoral masses
seeking Truth
in a universe of ever-shifting lies
meant to appease & manipulate
& play the masses like drunken puppets

an angry summer afternoon
feeling my family and freinds threatened
I stab a knife in my windowsill
the red handles a sign
my hand begins to bleed
a bridge at the mouth of the Mississippi collapses
exposes the dying infra-structure of america
the years of the wealthy
paying just enough
to the politicians
to keep from paying taxes

When I realized Bush was acting on my orders
tearing down the fence at the mexican boarder
then waited for my decision
I had to tell the world
"I would not presume to know."

I would not kill liberty!!
I would not destroy the democratic process

NO MAN OF GOD
denies the revelation
of personal choice
the sacred gift
of a loving father to a child


When I realized someone was acting in my name
usuing me as a diving right
to do their own will...

I had to trust man and god
the common sense
the ethics I heard everywhere
waiting for a movement
hungering for confirmation
of revelation
a self-perpetuating revival of the sp[irit

I play back in my mind the night
my non de plume
PAIN
was spoken all over the television
John Stewart yelling my name
Gwyneth Paltrow
...all the others...
I would sit at my computer feeling
the interest
a gray mist flowing in my forehead
coaxing a creature out of my unconscious

my body is now an ignored distraction
carting around my brain
I stand half in this material world
half in the exquisite mystery

I do not want to lead people into prison cells
graves
lives of desperate urban battles
that pit the converted against the converted
in pretend wars that keep the many
from joining forces against the few

I know in a part of me sickened by the thought
THIS MESSAGE CANNOT BE STOPPED
by blood or word or chain:
the will of the people is always won
never given

I see the peace that will come
our ethical circles will begin to enlarge

in this cynical world of hatred exploding
I fell in love with the human soul
I am an absurdity
as trapped in God's plan as everyone else
flesh embedded in a myth of omnipotence

MAN WOULD HAVE GOD B A REFLECTION
OF THEIR PARENTS...
what we know seems right
when we know no better
Jesus tried to warm you
everyone walks through the minute gate alone
leaving behind everything you have loved
trusting in a reward too great
for our simple dreams

I am now a hunted rebel held up
in the Emporer's Walled City
protected by soldiers
who view their lives
with less awe than their loyalty

a man faith lept into
a wrestler of angels
a defiant son fated to forge new paths
through the same old forests

Know I am hated where I would
there was love
loved where I expected hatred

my face on their posters are defaced
my claims buried and dissolved
in stolen tales
that try to make me a character
in their stories
without the slightest means
of ever walking in my shoes

I wish I could be like the dali lama
a smiling face in a dom room
representing the oppressed Tibetan's
& peace & harmony
No... I am a weapon

my allies and enemies
KNOW I WILL NOT play their spy games
my resistance is refusing
to insult the intelligence of the people
by pretending I should make decisions
for everyone
like what they should and should not know
about love and war

NOT EVEN GOD
tried to create and uncritical worshiping machine

only a man would sit in a room
filled with robots programmed to worship them

I have in mind a self=prepetuating plan
simple enough to enter any mind

"I let them use you
for their own ends."

The Killers


What am I to think of a world
that treats me like this?

The thoughtless torture of the us
came home to roost
as you treated the return of christ
like a circus of the profit
of the money lenders

You turned your head away from the blood
even as your own families bled

this naive Indiana boy got it in his head
he would be welcomed

until he realized he was something more
than a man writing up a game
a revolutionary without a revolution...
something mythic and storied
something he did not believe in...
and the entire world know...


i am a machine built and trained to write
driven by a being in my psych
that needs a coat of words
in a cold as hell world
where I crawl along naked and alone

the selfish will no longer
b tolerated as de-facto kings
living loathsome lives of largess
built on our bones

NOW IS THE TIME
for our black and white blinders
to fall useless at our feet
We must claim our battle
in the ancient war
against prejudice and ignorance

the thronging masses
will
TAKE WHAT WE NEED

better now than 20 years to come
when the population doubles
and the ranks
of the unwitting agents of chaos
become unstoppable, merciless mobs
raging across the land
slashing and burning


copywrite 2006 john scott ridgway