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Louis Marlowe: Louis Marlowe Poems

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THEMES OF THE UNKNOWN

Louis Marlowe

Did you have a boogie man in your childhood
What a metaphor!
Did he live inside the closet or under your bed
Abstract thinking required

Perhaps it followed you into the present
What a transition!
And it lives inside your ass
Abstract thinking required

Didn’t primitive man bow down to fire, their grand god, their oz
What a party!
Didn’t primitive Christians hang and burn witches, the odd and unwanted
Abstract thinking required

Thank god politicians don’t wave the bible to get elected
Praise the lord we’re finally civilized.
Send the troops to get the rich richer
Re-elect the bastard who’s looting us
If you believe the myth of Christ and bride
You might as well believe in the myth of patriotism

You serve the powers well
You think you’ll prosper and go to heaven
They told you so
They’ve also told god to leave you safe alone
But does god listen to them?

We’re still barbarians.
We’ll always be.
That’s this reality.
Alanis understands this irony.
We’re still barbarians.

Either you’ll never know you’re dead, c’est la morte
Or your consciousness will exist elsewhere, mystery eternal resolved

Are you that special that you have to live forever
Are you so irreplaceable that you should live at all
…You’d live one more second even if it meant another died first

Is it your life or your identity that you fear losing
I know you’re not thinking of your soul, not that truly
…What’s it like to be the center of the universe

When we sleep do we visit our real lives
Some other dimension we call home
Some other parallel universe perhaps
Another life, another family, another job
Another reality where we pay taxes to a leader
A homey place where we always make the bed
Our eternal souls reside there, comfortable, serene

Or could Earth be merely a video game in some tomorrow child’s hands
A circus of computer chips, not a three ring trinity
An amusement park of the soul, not a puritan’s kingdom
We not only paid for admission, cheap at half the price
But we are the freak show

Nice fairy tales, for those who fear death