Axis Munde

Djed Pillar of Egyptian Myth

seaborne casket
Osiris deceived
come to rest
upon far foreign shores
in a tamarisk womb
god and man become one
with the trunk of the wood
tree of life
sacred roots
deep in mortal terrain
fed by netherworld waters
mysterious fluid containing
the secretmost nourishing
words of the gods
branches touching the stars
holding orbs to their motion
conducting the soul of the flesh
to its afterlife
making of death an eternity
here was the Djed
as decreed by the axe
of a heretic king
fragrant pillar
upholding the roof of the world
the great spine of existence
till Isis retrieved her beloved
and made of his pieces
a father of pharaohs

Palmyra

 

“Ruins, Palmyra” by Felix Ziem

 

reconquered again

heaving sands

desert temples

caught in the cruel

teeth of time

a collective insanity

desecrates history

razes warm ruins

tumbledown towers

fragile with secrets

the ancient-most

stories of man

in the dawn of his

own self-discovery

newly conceived of

raw notions of deity

tentative postures

of early society

finding its bearings

without past tradition

no model no lessons

emerging reliant

on nothing but

sun washed ideas

held in undisturbed trust

of much troubled millennia

brought to their end

denied their retelling

erased of all traces

this rampage of

utter destruction

collective insanity

Murdering Babylon

“ISIS Burning Ancient Rare Books and Manuscripts”
Photo from Wikipedia Commons

hate so hungry for holocaust
infidel flesh blood and bone
insufficient to satisfy specious
pretensions to doctrines of
muslim haram pre-Muhammadan
relics of civilized culture must
die disappear be denied all
acknowledgement cleansing
the caliphate evil distilled to a
purity only the cruelest dull mind
could enjoy wreak destruction
tear down the fine totems of
sculptured antiquity smash the
stone brains of the mesopotamian
kings who gave order to chaos
run bulldozers through cherished
remnants of cities erected when
human society first stood emergent
from primitive infancy burn every
manuscript scroll with its record
of organized thought the ideas
who were seeds of philosophy
science mathematics and art
erase every trace of men’s seminal
history hold to your fictions your
brutalized bargains of malpracticed
faith make your world upon ruin
of ruins you need not behead me
for all your destruction has already
brought me to drown in my tears