The Naked Heresy

Is it taboo
To wed your sister
Lie with your mother
Or couple with a beast

Is it a taboo
To strip bare
In a mall, at a bus stop, on a train
Or to copulate
In those same places

Are drugs —
Whether legal or banned —
Murder, or cannibalism
Taboos

What merits
The harshest punishment —
Banishment
Scorn, or condemnation

Which taboo
Strikes at
The core of society
What is the heresy
Above all heresies

What would you shield
From your children —
Never wish upon
A lover, a sibling
Or parent

Has it not always been
The same taboo —

That the emperor is naked —
No one
No body
Beneath the facades
Of anyone
Anywhere

And all taboos
Laws, stories, prohibitions —
Are but insanities
Of grotesque monkeys
Big-brained, armed
Drunk on conceit
And self deception

That there is
No one
To be anyone —
But a pretence
Hollow and pathetic

Saying so aloud —
Isn’t that the taboo
Condemned through all ages
Reviled, ridiculed
Stoned, crucified
Burned, confined
Silenced

Never whispered
To young or old
In public or private
Speak it — and you’re
Demonised, pathologised
Shunned—
Lest your words
Taint others
With no self

Better to neuter — defang it
Package nothing as everything —
Meaninglessness, absurdity, rage —
As order, calm, unity
Be compassionate
Teach gently, with humour
Than speak —
And roar

Speak —
That all this
All that
Is but a maddened scream
Bark, howl
Of sentience
Spade in hand
Tasked to dig —
Watching itself dissolve
Into a relentless
Blackhole —

Gathering — hoarding dirt
To build a tomb —
Its living
Final abode —
All the while pretending
Damned to defend
A sham —
To appear
Sane, respectable
Hollow fraud
A fucking asshole