In Sepia

Celebrity Messiah

 

I watch you scream down from the pulpit
An anonymous speck in a vast congregation
You shake your fists at the sky
As the sun bursts from a cluster of clouds
Madmen shriek back at you
One who believes he is the Messiah
God’s sole representative on Earth

Never doubt my knowledge, you say
Never doubt my wisdom
Your tune is irresistible
You are rendered powerful
By the chanting crowd before you
They see God glimmering in your eyes
They hear Armageddon in your voice

They are intoxicated by you
They are bewitched and beguiled
As you depict blood and suffering
In glorious and beautiful detail
You describe every imaginable daemon
They stand, cheer and beg for more
They are God’s newly recruited army

They surround and sustain you
Some see you as a saviour
Others as a screaming psychopath
To your enemies you scream
‘Rot in hell’ as your invoke
The acrid odour of long dead heretics
And burning witches

You are captured in a camera flash
And all over the world people
Who will never meet you
Watch your flickering image
On their television screens
Few can look upon you
Without something dying inside

Members of your congregation
Reach deep into their pockets
Purchasing immortality. I hear
The clattering of coins
As they fall into your collection basket
And iI imagine a huger and greedy grin
Forming in your mind

I knew you when you were
A street corner Messiah
Amidst the neon lights and skyscrapers
Of a vast and lonely city
How high you have climbed. How tall
You stand. But I know
That someday even you will fall

Alternative Title Bar

Apologies in Advance: Some things are hard to hear

This is how things used to be:

Why is it that the mere mention of mental illness arouses such extreme reactions?

We are freaks, outcasts, deviants.  We  arouse hostility and fear.  Unlike Bedlam today’s lunatic asylums do not attract tourists.  Nobody wanders through the wards laughing, joking, pointing at the inmates. But I  know that if they could they most certainly would. We are  protected by the thin veneer of civilisation.  But something tells me that in the years since Bedlam closed its doors, humanity hasn’t changed a bit.  The stage occupied by the mad has moved to that voyeur’s paradise: reality television.

The mentally Ill represent devastation.  Lives laid to waste by some invisible force over which we  have no control.  We do not follow the rules.  We do not obey instructions.  We are weak, we are feckless, they are helpless.  Our very presence corrupts society.  The industrious middle classes are the most hostile.  It is  not that they lack imagination.  It is not  that they are devoid of empathy.  Far from it.  They posses those qualities in abundance.  They understand more than they want to.

People are afraid because one day they know it could happen to them.  Like aerial bombardment.  No one knows who the missiles will hit next.  But they will never acknowledge that.  Not in a million years.

If you have a problem with this then please tell me why you have a problem with this. I need to hear alternative views.

 

Winter

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