THE ANGER OF GOD

 

     “Hellish fire or love comes from the same source

     as heavenly fire or love—from heaven’s sun, or the

     Lord. However, it is made hellish by the people who

     receive it.” Heaven And Hell, section 569.

 

Why does the Body Electric

Cease to flow with the urge—

Bursting into cinders

With an uncontrollable surge?

 

Look at the Good Grey Poet,

Paralyzed in a wheelchair--

Paraded around the country

Like an idol they prepared.

 

What glamour deludes them

That Freedom has no consequence?

Still searching for that Promised Land,

They stare out in a trance—

 

Consumed with lust and greed,

Strip-mining purple mountains

And smothering the prairies

With flesh of butchered bison.

 

Whose Name do they call upon,

Kneeling to their false desires?

Damnation cleaves the sky

With pyrotechnic fire.

 

Their separate selves they sing,

Yet utter the word Democracy—

In virtual wastelands condemned

To wander and grope blindly.

 

Have the flames of Heavenly Love

Turned hellish in their breasts,

Casting them into the furnace

Of their own self-righteousness?