Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name—
But what’s confusing you is just the nature of my game.
I whispered in Ashoka’s ear beside the smoky Kalinga plain:
First, slay your foes and drown their cries, then preach compassion from their pain.
I watched Arjuna load his bow, with Krishna holding steady,
Told him life returns again—so make your arrow arm be ready.
I sang with Moses in the desert, thundered from the mountain stone,
Mercy for your neighbour’s kin, annihilation for your own.
When Jericho’s great walls came down, I cheered with every shout,
Laid waste to every man and child, called genocide devotion’s route.
I donned Roman purple with the cross, made bishops kings, made war a prayer,
Hung Christ’s forgiveness from the tree and stoked the stake’s relentless glare.
I rode through Constantinople’s gates with “Deus vult” upon my tongue,
While Galileo’s bones were crushed beneath the hymns monks always sung.
Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name—
But what’s confusing you is just the nature of my game.
I echoed in Medina’s streets, where peace and war entwined,
The Prophet’s sword and Prophet’s word, both justified as kind.
I crowned empires with the Shahada, sowed division, called for death,
But danced as Sufis spun in circles, craving love’s ecstatic breath.
I stalked the Ganges, cleaned by ashes, watched communal blood flow free,
Sikh and Hindu, brother-slayers, slicing for identity.
I was there on Partition’s night, I blessed the mobs, I soothed the flames,
Then clothed myself in mourners’ black, absolved the willing of the blame.
I watched the Buddha’s tranquil smile on armies bathed in red,
Saw monks in Myanmar, yellow-clad, give blessing to the dead.
I heard the peacemakers’ mantras ring yet watched them twist with hate,
Rohingya wept, but Buddhism slept content to call their fate.
Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name—
But what’s confusing you is just the nature of my game.
In olden halls from Moscow’s domes to Norsemen’s stormy seas,
I craved the glory of the dead, demanded pagan pleas.
I ordered Aztec hearts be cut, gave Vikings death for fame—
In every faith and every tongue, my hunger stays the same.
I heard Confucian songs of peace distorted by the blade,
Saw Heaven’s Mandate turn to ash, a million lives betrayed.
Native prophets danced with blood—visions laced with wrath,
Curses tangled in the wind on every holy path.
Modern preachers, priests, and monks bless bullets, drones, and fear,
I wrap their creeds in national flags and bottle up their tears.
For every child I teach to love, I teach another how to kill—
My name is Faith, I shape the world, in peace and blood, I thrill.
Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name—
But what’s confusing you is just the nature of my game…
So when you look for holy love or march to holy war,
Remember every prayer you speak can be the prayer for gore.
I am the whisper in the silence, the scripture sung in pain—
If you damn the dark within me, you damn your own domain.
Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name—
But what’s puzzling you is just the nature of my game.
