Poor St. Wetwalker’s Claim To Fame

Poor St. Wetwalker’s Claim To Fame


He’s got a tale to tell that spans the seas.

Swimmers and boaters go rigid to hear.

It speaks rancid odours that to nets do cling.


Of death sold wholesale in morning markets.

To shoppers who haggle with dealers who wriggle.

Seafood on ice, they cry! And well they should.


It’ll be a gram of mercury sold with each kilogram soon,

To sizzle on the griddle, garnished with plastics.

Netted where nearby another island of detritus floats.


Modern times with their forever utensils and bags

Are what feed the fishies now, praise capitalism!

So chew a lump of savoury stew, made with scallops,

And shrimps, and our sleekest finned friends too.


St. Wetwalker got his wings when he rescued a Dodo,

Netted it’s been said by a huge, heaving agglomeration

Of flotsam and jetsam and turbid oil that reflected the sun.

Gods

Gods


Unique among all forms of sentient life on our

Home planet, we homo sapiens have imagined

Gods to venerate, worship and fear. Often we

Invent Gods as being tempermental, assigning

Them the genders of men and women like us.


They stubbornly refuse to show themselves no

Matter how much we implore them to come to

Our aid and assistance in needful human affairs.

They remain silent but omnipresent in the minds

Of most of us. Some would say, capriciously.



We’ve invented rituals intended to show them the

Heights of our love and the depths of our belief.

But still, they stubbornly refuse to intervene in our

Affairs. We give our treasure to their priests and

Priestesses, we offer them our lives and our sexual

Celibacy but still, they remain mute, seemingly

Unmoved by our ever-present needs and wants.


One thing about the Gods we love that brings us

To anger and hatred of our fellow humans more

Quickly than any other thing they could choose to

Do, is when they too, stubbornly, refuse to declare

Belief in, or fear of any of the Gods we believe in.


Such nonconformist heretical ideas cannot be borne.

Our minds seethe with hate-filled anger like no other

Thing could make us do; or cause us to pity them for

Lives that are forever tainted by a lack of meaning.


We hate them, especially, when they try to remind

Us that humankind has, throughout its history, left us

Countless artefacts that indicate to us quite plainly that

Our forebears, like us, had always invented mighty gods

To serve to palliate their many fears and uncertainties,

And as symbols that could be implored or propitiated

When natural events filled them with dread, or when

Their needs and wants were left unmet by their own lack

Of agency, or when uncontrollable events reduced their

Circumstances from plentiful times to times of need.


But now, as technology shrinks our world so that events

Which transpire elsewhere effect us here also, we need

To wholly trust one another for survival and rely upon

Each other, as never before, to create solid, useable

Non-imaginary solutions for the needs and wants of all.


If, after all the aeons of worship of Gods, no heavenly

Interventions have ever been proven by any method,

Save mere belief, isn’t it time to trust the brotherhood

And sisterhood of humankind to work together, without

Hatreds because of nonconformity of imaginary beliefs,

To search for and find and implement solutions which

Benefit all homo-sapiens equally, regardless of belief?