Why do people snarl and spit
At Islam, at faith itself, in dread?
Whisper fear of crescent-lit
Night, while candles for saints are fed.
Why fixate, with blaming eyes,
On the veils, the prayers at dawn,
Yet hush the gilded Christian lies
And all the sins their robes have drawn?
Count with your fingers and your toes
The endless number of the vile –
Callous greed that ever grows,
Wrung from the poor with guile and style.
Diamond rosaries in their hand,
A kiss for a pope’s jeweled ring,
“Glory be” that may mute the stand
For what is right, and justify stealing.
They preach of hell’s eternal fires
But pocket alms, build private towers.
Saintly robes conceal desires
To bathe the innocent in showers
Of fear and guilt, and subtle lessons
That man must blindly bow and pray,
Teaching children with confessions –
Obey, obey, don’t look away.
Why do we bend before the throne
Of rulers cloaked in holiness?
Shackled minds are easier blown
By winds of dread and loneliness.
We’re taught to seek the invisible,
To trust what no one’s ever seen,
Perhaps because the sensible
Are hard to rule — too free, too keen.
History’s pages bleed abuse,
Crusaders, Inquisitions grim;
And always, faith a ready excuse
For hoarding gold, for every whim.
Robin Hoods who fill their pockets
With tithes, with sweat and honest bread,
Never pausing, no regrets –
“God bless us all,” is what they’ve said.
Distorted values all around:
Chosen, anointed, set apart.
Religion feeds their shadowed ground
And seeds corruption in the heart.
Laws for “them” and laws for “us,”
Sanctimonious decree –
Judge the brown, the veiled, discuss
Evil, never let them be.
Yet in every mosque and church –
A mother soothes a crying child,
A father kneels, a heartsick search
For meaning makes the meek less wild.
We weaponise what could have healed,
Twisting words and holy books,
Faith, abused and misrevealed
By lurking priests and shaven crooks.
Power craves its pageantry,
Processions, robes, and shining things;
Empty graves and blasphemy –
A crown adorned with tarnished rings.
For every proud imam or pope
Who tempts a crowd to raise its hand,
There’s someone struggling to cope
With life, and trying to understand.
Invisible, that old divine –
Not in the stars, nor up above,
But in a lonely child’s mind,
Who seeks forgiveness, trust, and love.
Yet we are taught to kneel and serve
The preacher, priest, or mullah there,
And shamed for any urge or nerve
To doubt, to question or to care.
Is faith the balm, or faith the chain?
Does God demand our abject fear?
Why let belief control and reign
If faith is pure, if God is near?
Perhaps it’s not the prayer or creed
At fault, nor veils, nor holy books;
But the hands that twist the seed –
The thieves, the wolves, the lying crooks.
O let us count with fingers, toes,
The endless numbers of the vile,
And question, yes, what each man knows,
The callous greed behind each smile.
The root of corruption is found
When power rules in God’s own name –
Let us unlearn the poisoned ground,
And seek what’s true, not what brings shame.
by Bakchos
