Babylon
O Babylon! Your God is a sport-utility vehicle, a VCR, and a two-car garage!
You delight in images of killing and synthetically-augmented breasts!
Your arteries are clogged with Big Macs and a thousand pieces of
Kentucky-Fried Chicken!
Your God is Technology. Your God is Progress.
Your skyscrapers rise to the heavens! Your astronauts fly to the moon!
You clone sheep! alter genes! make a mountain into a parking lot!
Your fields flower! Your grain-bins groan under the weight of the ripe
corn!
But the land of your soul is a desolation.
O God of Henry Ford, the Wright Brothers, and Bill Gates
All the nations adore Thee!
(Pretty soon they'll be ordering Papa John pizza by cell phone in New
Guinea....)
Your God is Mammon.
After the movies, after the Quarter-pounders-with-cheese, super-size fries,
2-liter Cokes,
after the evening news, the Hostess cupcakes, golf, beers, and swimming 20
laps,
the hunger will be the same as the day you first felt it, O Babylon!
the thirst of the soul, O Babylon!
E-mail: luciusf@hotmail.com
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