Belief is so unfortunate,
necessary to parse the world
into a human-readable format
but arbitrary, biased, non-rigorous.
Just a tentative model,
but we fall in love with it,
shelter it like a daughter beset
by barbarians, lie for it, die for it.

People are closing everything
even as the world is opening,
and those who cannot consent are criminalized,
the prisons stocked like the holds of pilgrim ships,
slave ships. Isn't it something how the market
can profit even on the petty profiteers
of criminal enterprise? on the punitive farming
of unpopular exercisers of conscience?

We fall in love with belief, go mad for it,
and couple uncooperatively with our neurotic lover, Fear,
who makes us feel alive, who makes us feel.
There's a patriot born every minute.
There's a sad patsy torn every minute
between the broken obedience of the citizen
and the open dissent of the free.

We need-but-lack the strength to not forgive
(for at some level to forgive is always to condone).
To understand people but condemn them just the same
when they heed the pillow-talk of Fear and venerate the highest bidder.
To show everyone the dirt on their skin, show them ours,
and how we try to wash in every filthy Ganges
that was once sacred to someone
because it was once sacred to someone.

Sacrifice is not reimbursable.
Who keeps you afraid? They are your terrorists.
You are either with them or against them.
They try to close everything.
If you can't open them, close them.
There's no time to forgive them.

Choose ignorance or choose influence
and then never taste of the other again.
If you won't provoke the villainous giant,
you aren't worth the handful of beans.