Burning Bush -- The Cage

This poem like all the burning Bush poems

comes to me in that moment between asleep or awake

When the voices in my soul are clear, but fading

When I see the divine sometimes clearly, always late.

 

The depth and magistery of the vision

Always fading away while darkness yet reigns

and still comes the day.

And the warnings fade

But the dread remains.

 

But more often the darkness is hovering near and dearly.

And part of me answers in trepidation.

I understand the Fear of the Lord of Creation.

For in those moments I understand

the mortal danger of my own annihilation.

 

The Burning Bush

 

There ain't no burning Bush

No beckoning pillar of fire

That will save us from ourselves

Or pull us from the mire.

 

We are mortally responsible

For everything we do

From our thoughts, words and actions

comes everything we rue.

 

The Cage

 

It seems scientific

The monstrous things we do

We put people in steel cages.

We stick probes and things in their heads

 

The robes are clean and white

The science is dry and peer reviewed

But when you torture someone

you have to live with images of hands chewed right thru

 

Needles in the head

Some hurt and tortured instead

Animals caged and fed

Lab rats, alive but really dead.

 

Yes, I know the object above to all below.

Testing on animals is supposed to save human lives.

They tortured the living to save the future.

But the ashes of the past

Are fiery dry dust in our mouths now.

 

Refrain -- There ain't no burning Bush

 

It looks so scientific, so clean and brave.

To lock up persons and turn them into animals.

The gowns may look the same

But the torturers of hell on earth

Operate Cages for human beings.

 

Splayed up against walls

They give their reasons, but it's all a lie.

Torturing persons to make them cry.

Exercising power as if that power can hide one's own mortality.

 

Not even human

Not even scientific

Just depravity laid on thick

They claimed exigency but it all was just sick.

And in the end both torturer and tortured both will die

in screams of agony.

 

Germany, China, Indonesia

The ancient trade goes on.

Take, beat, degrade, destroy.

an ancient trade, gainful employ.

 

But the tortured scream

inside their tormentors head.

Better a trial, more merciful instead.

Then what awaits them at the end.

 

A former colonel in Argentina asked for a pension;

He said "I can't sleep at night"

"for the voices of all the people I interrogated"

"for the screams I still hear in the half light

 

Screams even I hear in my dreams.

For all of us are connected, whether we like it or not.

Our conscious may seem clear, but our dreams are not.

We may think we go unpunished to the end.

but we don't.

And Penance, Teshuvah, absolution

We seek, and seeking, it's no joke where we are heading.

We either turn away or we perish.

And we took ourselves there, either way.

 

This is but a snippet of a much longer nightmare.

There ain't no burning Bush...

... but there is a beckoning pillar of fire

Do we really want to go there?

Christopher H. Holte

Another Holte who can write poetery:

http://poetrypoem.com/cgi-bin/index.pl?poemnumber=429674&sitename=ziaholte&poemoffset=0&displaypoem=t&item=poetry

Further Reading

Not enough Torture?

Three Simple Truths