In dryest desert
Lay hidden jewels,
The monuments of days gone by,
Beneath the holy
Sands of Time,
Where altars to the Old Gods lie,

I found myself
Without my faith,
And could not pray, for I would die,
When I awoke,
Beneath the palms,
At the temple of the Ceruni.

To see their Gods,
Such power and fear!
For I've felt no presence as I have felt here,
So strong,  so pure,
So rich; Alive!
The Gods have felt so near this night.

I wandered in,
Through sacred gardens,
Which no other man had yet seemed defy,
And came upon her,
Her robes as the snow,
The Goddess of the Ceruni.

She beckoned me
From silvered dome,
Where she was seated,  upon silver throne,
I passed the great hemp
And red poppies which shone,
To lay my eyes upon her.

"O Dear Goddess," did i cry,
"Have the heart to tell me why,
When I have spent my days and nights,
Not quite dead, Yet not alive,
Am I shrouded in your Holy Light? "

She gave no words,
But simply smiled,
I, gripped by silence all the while,
Could find no speech
Nor pause for thought,
As she whispered lessons which one time, were taught.

You may think me mad;
I swear I am not!
I'll point out the towers if we find the spot,
Such silver and gold,
Such wonderful shine!
To be in a place where the Gods would recline.

I've witnessed the spires
Of fallen empires,
So proudly they stand in desert dry!
But I've no recollection,
Upon sudden reflection,
Of where the Holy Temple lies.

But when I die,
O, take me there!
Where hemp and poppy kiss the sky!
And on my slate,
Let them write,
"Here lies the last of the Ceruni!"

we are young gods,

daughters and sons of a generation

who gave up on love a universe ago,

but we do our best to experience it-

we sell it in bottles of pop culture and rabid obsessions;

turn it into a conglomeration that profiteers on excess,

a chaos of depression, anxiety, dark self-depreciating wit-

and become artists who lament on first-world tragedies.

we are young gods,

we scoff at religion and we bathe in unholiness,

sin is the new in, black is your best act, and we love it;

we wear our indifference like an armour,

because we fear what we'll see if we're allowed

to understand our emotions and display our vulnerability.

we are young gods,

happy ever after is a joke and true love even more so,

we inhale criticism and exhale cynicism,

because the titans before us acknowledge that the world is cruel

but we embrace it- we drape ourselves in abject and misery,

stitch and mould uncaring faces onto our flesh that gaze upon

the heartbroken jagged shards of ourselves, bleeding guts and glory

embedded all over the cement patch wood floors, amongst the whisky and wine.

we are the young gods;

a mass of degenerates with our entitlement and liberals,

a numbing, sweet hollow feeling that we substitute

for the lack of love and care that we've grown used to;

a realism that carves like a knife at tender ages and

we wear our sadness like a charm- aesthetics to be envied;

we're self-destructive, faithless, pointless,

burning in our question for the meaning of existence

and the only religion we'll ever bow down to

is ourselves.