The gnome of death presides, it's true. We watch from a corner (overinformed and underknowledged) while our generals hump the planet and our priests bless them on their way (call it the way of the cross), while lizard kings do a death-grip waltz on the bones of the same dance done before and the tribal legions raise their banners one against the other, while the garbage and the bones collect waist-deep around the men who proclaim each absurd war holy.
And informed sources said today that God is on our side. Although the Lord was not around to comment, Death had this to say: "Kiss my rumpled ass and sing power. There are no fair fights and only I can save you from love gone wrong." It is stylish to despair.
Still, imagination holds out--for what isn't, and never was, but might, some say, come to be. It's a fool's vision, perhaps, but they have found it in caves, on ruined walls and in the notebooks of young dead poets. Dumb dreams of the artist depicting a planet in love with itself, where the Gnome is silly for a time. Where men can tweak his beard and dare to be naked and vulnerable, loving and inefficient, and without the borrowed power of Death over one another.
It's true the Gnome has his way over man in the end; the game isn't fair, it just is. Still, there's no reason to serve the dark bastard, to run his errands for him, to extend a soulless kingdom while we have the light. For if death is his threat, life is our only revenge. Sing: "Kiss your own dead ass and be damned. There are no real fights among men, and no one needs saving from love."
