useless art

“Fire and war and monstrous things
I now leave behind me. I am grateful
for God’s mercy in not living through
these times. I have seen the future
and I am filled with terrible fear.”

I fear monsters of our own creation,
beasts of metal and glass mocking
our fallible mortality, arcing towards
a perfection where we, the Creator,
are parasitic gnats.

I fear the power of knowledge,
the notion that forces of nature
are there for our benefit, simple
mute resources we can tame and
harness with frayed ropes.

I fear the embrace of this vast expanse
of light and darkness towering above
the sky. I fear the ignorance of those that
accept this unknown danger as the truth
in light of His works.

I fear our stubborn ignorance, our
willful insurrections against the very
things that make us human. We are
forever scarred by the fire, and we fight
to conquer these scars.

This is our flaw.

The marks of our progress are violent fissures
tearing through the earth, leading quickly
to our end, leading into conflict
with ourselves, leading to the flame.
And we shall burn.

We shall burn, and the ignorance and
folly that brought us to this end shall remain
as ash, just as the ash made by our
all-important progress
settles on the bones of what we once were.

And for all this noise,
I fear nothing,
nothing has changed.