RABID

The earth trembles and mammoth trees quake to the thunder of boots;

Legions march in the name of the One True God.

Crops are nourished with blood and death’s perfume permeates the barren landscape.

Onward Christian soldiers.

The road to heaven runs red with the life force of heathens and the firmament resonates with their dying screams.

Onward Christian soldiers, onward to today.

Weep for the unborn and slaughter the living.

Lips stretched in beatific smiles spread the distorted word of the One True God;

Mad eyes in alabaster faces stare unblinking upwards; grasping arms stretch towards the heavens as bodies quiver in anticipation of the rapture.

And God weeps.

Mohammad’s soldiers rage through the land, and schools burn.

Child brides scream for mercy as grizzled hands lay waste their youth.

Manhood is reached with the caress of a gun and the stench of blood.

Terrified eyes see the world through the slit of a cloth prison.

Fervent, fanatical youth, their bodies become bombs, impel their final sacrifice into the crowd,

The words “Alluha Akhbar” their final prayer.

And Allah weeps.

Prison doors creak open and shattered bodies crawl toward the light.

A nation reclaims its former name; once again, they are Burmese.

Captives and captors unite to create a new enemy, a new casualty, the victim who does not exist.

The gentle fingers of Buddhist monks ignite the inferno that consumes the homes of the people without a name; their sage eyes twinkle with glee as the flames erases another trace of the people who are not.

And Buddha weeps; and screams the name Rohingya.

The black-robed magi have been vanquished.

Serfs revel at the lifting of the yoke.

But amidst the laughter and the joy, an unfamiliar god, one that abides no symbols, furtively, insidiously asserts itself as the new savior.

This god, who bears the false name of secular, invokes the old madness of the One True God.

Adherents spit on the blasphemy of the veil and curse the emblems of the others.

And at last, bow bare heads to the god of nous autres.

And there is nothing but to weep.