This Hallowed Ground: A Poem
Posted By: SeverianofUrth<severn117@gmail.com>
Date: 19 January 2006, 7:26 pm
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"This place seems, you know, dead." She looks around at the desolation of the cheery strangers walking in happy blissful stupidity. "I mean, it doesn't feel real."
He hugs her. "Of course it is. Or else you would have accepted the blue pill."
"Like, you mean, in the Matrix?"
"No."
"Oh! The psilocyben..." She wrinkles her brow, and sits down on one of the benches. "But I like who I am."
"But they don't."
"True." The girl stands up. "But I like who I am."
"Listen, girl," the man says quietly, "I've done things you can't even dream of. And I tell you: this is nothing. Just take the goddamn pill."
"But I don't feel like it. This mall seems dead but what's gonna happen when I swallow the drug and everything goes, you know, bloopy?"
"Then you take a shit on this hallowed ground..."
"I don't get it!"
"You're not meant to." The man laughs. "It's mystical. Supernatural. Explanations won't be provided."
Or will they?
Hail, Citizen, you walk through dangerous grounds
Where mines and dogshit litter our good brown earth,
Our shit-earth, our piss-earth, this earth for which
Your forefathers shed litres of blood.
Hail, Citizen, you-- don't lower your pants here!
No, not now! This shit-earth is a hallowed place,
Consecrated with the blood of your fathers and
Your ancestors, where the impersonal coldly
Assumes the war-like moods, betraying their fear
Though that fear wrecks them, though pride melds
Their faces and haunting echoes of dying comrades
Rings through this ground--
Now you've done it, Citizen, you had to take a shit,
Did you? Here, dig a hole: no toilet paper for you.
What? Why are you getting up? No, I command you to
Atone for your crimes-- no, no, not me, is that a gun--
And the Citizen rose and zipped up his pants,
Left behind him a yellow pile of dung and a dead corpse
Lying molding into his beloved patch of dirt.
Signaling changes, hailing presentiments of more to come,
The Covenant ships-- pale purple revenants-- gathered
In the distant horizon.
The deeper meaning to this is that when you need to take a shit, don't feel constrained to do otherwise just because there are no toilets nearby. The even deeper meaning, on the other hand, is too complex for me to detail in mere words: thus, here are arcane symbols for you to decipher according to their meanings.
^*
This deeper meaning, of course, means that on 'this hallowed ground,' where the blood of their forefathers soaks the earth and feeds the worms, you can take all the shit you want on it, and nevermind the offended. Break tradition! Run! No use defending some worthless patch of dirt!
Then, last of all, the deepest meaning of this poem is a silent condemnation of that attitude.
Or is it? (Takes a very snobbish pose) Or is it?
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