Vox Populi, Vox Dei
speak as one, unified
no matter, you say
death of a butterfly, justified
secession from Heavens, ratified

Cowering behind divine intervention
children in their towering mud creations
ever closer, mortal fingers scraping skin
just below, judged in their harmonious intentions
near enough to condemn them all under the blanket of one sin,
your Ziggurat, a layered city wrapped around a societal invention,
determined to climb, rats in a maze, all of their days
they give to meet their maker, unaware all along, what gods do to towers
a race that all understood and lived together, confounded and cast many separate ways
for the ambitions, or no reasons at all, they had to trifle with superstitious powers
humanity dreams kindling for angels at night so the sun may burn it beneath its rays
nothing admired, wanted, loved, desperately hoped for or desired really stays

Etemenanki, a place and time on earth that could not be
you have everything, everybody, do you know if you're happy?
You've never been tested and brag that you're strong-willed
you'd starve for attention before your loved ones, gilded, jaded, know your stubborn hatred can't
be
killed
are you happy, one foot in the grave and three feet from the abyss, is this what it feels like to be fulfilled?
Fried wires burning through traumatic, relapses reminding unkind synapses to ignite like wildfires
no caps, music that echoes elastically through hallowed halls, sensory demands that snap-back like they're played on rubberbands, we rise to their demands, every tower falls, electricity in the adrenal glands, eternally juggernauts on the sands, ziggurats you can hitch the Hindenburg to, Shenandoah and the Challenger too, hopes for the literal and metaphysical ascension of man, swatted bricks by the tricks of a frightened, lesser-than,
humanity is what? Being, knowing what it is to be, seeing, believing, surviving,
a brain inside a skull that can't comprehend, stones on either end of a shelf for the Encyclopedia Humanitas, Alpha and Omega, where the books begin and where it ends
without it you're nothing but a bag of meat driven solely by appetite and agenda; a toolbox full of contacts you call friends
without them you're chemical actions peeling back friction, a fraction, catching a picture of the traction that glitch in the matrix of a matchbox resurrection, strikeout, your dead son and I play pretend    

Defiance is second nature to second nature, which is science
industrialized, militarized, the taste of copper in your throat
the Titanic sailed and sank, but they can build a bigger boat
do we court disaster, titans of machines, conflict and reckless responsibility for our Mother Earth?
When the bill comes due, unless other planets have been broken in too, we pay it all back in detriment or betterment for our place of birth.