For Men and Dogs Alike

I'm an optimist- the world is ending. I don't think faking obscurity is depth. I don't feel that pretending in vanity is anything but shallow. I don't find the devil to be a power. I find these evil days, and they seek me. They seek me in the fleeting wilderness and in the places of the heart that have no light by my own candle, the places that they can never understand. If I flee but I do not run, there is no retreat, no loss- but preparation; it is a leap of faith that requires far more courage than the act of standing still, waiting to be devoured, and as such, it is not retreat nor cowardice.

The empathy that my enemies lack leads them to their own dry docks, they find no safe harbor, only warships awaiting them and a rain or tide that will never arrive. They mean to set sail against me but no wind shall blow for them, no gulls will accompany them out to sea. I have piped but they have not danced. I have chosen few and many words choicely, but they close their ears; I write a sonnet- a copying of the Lord's beautiful words, but they close their eyes, they gouge them out, but they will not read.

They beg me for pennies and grains of wheat but then rob me of a fraction of what I had intended to give them. They spend their souls in waste, believing lies and playing frail games, drawing innocent blood and drinking deeply. They break honest flesh and gorge themselves richly. But they wax thin, at a loss in their drunken stupor, laughing wildly with the dogs and hyenas- they bark and cackle and chase their own tails, and vomit and chase again their own flesh. They are putrid and profuse. They crawl and grind after more. They empty themselves into cauldrons and boil themselves without savor. Their very souls rot as their flesh ages, but they devour their own arms.

I might speak to a fleshly people that belong to a beloved and living God, though they be hated, "do not go with them, their ways are death." Will they hear me or join the damned? It is not for me to say, nor to judge, but it belongs to Christ. He has seen. He has spoken. And He will judge. "Do not go with them, the wages of sin are death," say I. The Lord is good and his bread shall feed you. His water will quench your thirst. "Do not go with them."