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Louis Marlowe: Louis Marlowe Poems

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THE ABSTRACT & AMBIGUOUS

Louis Marlowe

No middle ground exists for these fantasyland believers
Nothing but black and white reality to tame their fears of the unknown

There’s nothing in between for the rare soul that demands an answer
The curious and defiant have always populated Christian stocks

No wonder the flocks are filled with sheep
Those with critical minds flee elsewhere

The disciples stopped asking questions eons ago
It hurts for them to think

They left it up to their phony god
There’s no suffering with pedagogy

They find pride in their simple mindedness
Like there was a special on Christianity at the supermarket

They worship the absolute, an ideal at best
Like they’d fall off the earth if nothing was cemented down

It’s really not that hard to use your mind
Just put down the big macs and the bible

Turn off the electronic kindergarten
And try to put two thoughts together

Why can’t two or more ideas exist with equal validity
Is it that difficult to accept that reality is not as orderly as a fairy tale

Why can’t progress be a cool pool on a hot summer day
Is it that terrible to face the future

Looking at a restaurant menu, there’s too much to decide
I want the chicken and the steak, why can’t I have both

Is this not ambiguity
Does this not exist

The fearful slave chooses combination number one, after all
The dreaded potato salad can always be pushed to the side and ignored

The freethinker orders ala carte to suit his unified tastes, after all
Seeing beyond the literal delivers an Olympian buffet

Reality is as subjective as taste, but I forget you are in denial
For you everything must be concrete or all is lost

Rejecting ambiguity, another fear dispatched, another possibility forsaken
Castrating the abstract, another demon defeated, another witch hanged

For those that reject abstract thought and ambiguity
The unknowable is as terrifying as the unknown

Simple answers to complex questions sooth the brain weary faithful
Like Ibsen’s guilty son their heads burst with inherited infection

But syphilis is not to blame
Ignorance and denial has poisoned them

Generations of obedient fear ridden slaves do the bidding of the sanctimonious
They’ve been building pyramids to conformity ever since Christ bled

Their dead ancestors’ old time religion felt good enough for them
They even wrote a song about it and sing it with the raising of their flag

Shaw’s idealists chased their fantasies
And expected everyone to submit to lies

The ideal can not be mandated
But we all know it can be abused

The abstract brings answers described by god
The ambiguous enlarges the brain

When the brain is enlarged, so is the soul
When the mind is blessed, so is the spirit