===========================
      BIG MERRY GO ROUND
  ===========================


 What for those masks and statues
 along the wall racks     are those cracks in the rows
 of spindles with paint peeling meant to be metaphysical

 A hapless fervent spins one
 of the wheels in hurried waste
 a century of their favorite karma flies off in haste
 unknown even to the
 carcass of the crusty old priest on
 display behind the modern glass divider
 The chip does nothing more than sluing to the bust
 loosens a bit of dust
 from the wall basket
          containing the old saint's kidney stones.

 That rumble the thunder has just made
 had nothing to do with it
 it is not the gods getting ready for a visit


 The priests
 steering the population past the
 spinning wheels had no reason
 to order heads shaved
 every six hours till the thunder stops.


       No dumb beliefs in
       gods that
       treat humans with low gifts

       Some hand gets sliced away
       for every one
       forgetting to pray five times a day minimum
       the left hand lost to those who, forgetting the way,
       eat with it on that
       on that fateful day


   The same is recycled through the pit
   time after time
   till logic gets sick of it


 Blasting into nirvana
 awesome state of hypothetical
 nothing
 relentless
 pointless
               powerful without a thought
 and certainly no science
 for nothing in everything is chaos.


 Fees  paid for confessions
 the  best trees hewed anew
     for processions of the cross
    carried by a staggering authority to demonstrate
   all that absurd in their shuffling positions
  ahh, saints made from the
 catalogue of persecuted heretics who
  wouldn't break the ties of the death grip yet
   didn't quite believe the beliefs
    of old languages intoned into the
     dark of consciousness



 A mother keeps turning up in the weirdest places
 everyone different
 every name the same

 How many times
 have you been struck by fear
 for failing to
 get to the mass on time

     Some great clot of heady vibrations
     tuned into dope and sex and other
     low frequency emanations

                   Beetles eat whatever
                   falls to the cave floor

     Some wretches suspect
     there is much much more
     than easy to score
     side trips to the force
     and do nothing more besides talk about it
     they do not think to the edge of obvious
     they do not see beyond chaos

 talking is wasteland easy
 and no sting of truth
 the thoughts merely babble
 a few seconds of hard thought
 got caught misting in easy breezes

        What dammed legacies
        still linger glued to the subconscious from
        days gone past when priests
        taught god circled the earth like a merry go round.


                         greydon moore  (circ) 1990-96