TERRIFIC PRESENT

On a distant desert past it rests,
the present of the Abraham religions.

Treated as inferiors in slavery,
ancient Jews fell for an ethnic belief
in a Chosen People, in a Promised Land.
Then, non-Jews let it split into several creeds
to cater to their different gentile needs.

Still, all of them continued to be spoon-fed
with the sands and seeds, swords and sorrows
of one region of the world exclusively,
which was to receive human attention
and divine promotion out of all proportion.
Altho divided amongst themselves
those of the Cross and Crescent were one
against the godless Evil Empire
against which everything was justified.
Any fiend who killed communists was a friend,
and the warring Christians armed militant Muslims,
and the Judaists were their cousins of the faith,
always more equal or unequal than others.

But the People of the Books must have known too
that the innocent and the guilty
responsible for the global imbalance
or for religious strife and arrogance
will not walk lastingly without reward.
Wherever they are, death will find them out,
even if they are in towers
built up strong and high.
(It is in the Holier Writ.)

That day the doomed planes
hijacked for the Host in Heaven
hit.
The towers tumble down,
the private prayers start,
the flaming fires follow,
the public prayers take over.

On all alike the same terror is imposed:
another present from the Abraham religions.

Vincent van Mechelen
57.SMY-SLL