Headlines
Gadabout God
faces famous courtesan,
tits and
all,
calls Moses
a fraud, calls Jesus false
as the
bloody cross he hung from;
tricks of
the trade, snakes in the grass,
he calls
them, all of them;
read all
about it, it's all here,
plain as day
or the sparkling night.
Queens leave
adultery to
their
daughters instead of cold millions;
read all
about it, read about
flames,
arson, dying firemen,
flying
bullets and
dead famous
entertainers,
death coming
to Disneyland
in a
hoop-skirt;
lapidary
hoopla, it's all there,
bold as
brass, stupid as paint,
creating
coffins of words,
black and
fleeting,
holding us
briefly
and no more.
We ain't
talking about the good word,
boys and
girls,
the gospels
to come, to be told,
to be
treasured;
just the
daily bleating, the comings and goings,
the
ratcheting of infamous feats,
retarded
admirals and presidents
at home and
abroad,
in big
trouble, uh-oh,
stays of
execution,
all kinds of
sinners and whores
in the
fields of earth and
at the end
of the road, the end of now,
as we know
it, a modest apocalypse.
Wow! And
forget it.
God, sly as
a fox and bold as a lion,
scales down
his limitless circumference,
signaling
from the sky,
comes down
again, this time
harrowing
not only hell,
but earth's
own sweet self,
not only
boxing
the daily
evangelists into oblivion,
but bringing
to us all
His grace
and terrible truth;
ripping out
now with
the message
of eternity;
none of it
lasts, folks,
not a
goddamned bit of it.
The Whore of Babylon -- Hans Burgkmair
And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters: With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration. And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he comes, he must continue a short space. And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goes into perdition. And the ten horns which thou saw are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast. And he said unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigns over the kings of the earth.
ReplyDelete— Book of Revelation 17:1–18
So, as a prince is forced to know how to act like a beast, he must learn from the fox and the lion; because the lion is defenseless against traps and a fox is defenseless against wolves. Therefore one must be a fox in order to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten off wolves.
--Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, "Il Principe"