In Ages of Unreason

1

In ages of unreason
              deliberation has no place
logic's locked up   awkward facts
are told to shut their awkward face

       while discussion
       — however innocuous or innocent —
                            is only allowed to occur

if and when  the dogmatic mobs' religion's
       high priests have all conferred
              and agreed to grant permission.


In ages of unreason
even the feeblest expression
       of anything so heretically rational
as divergence from  or skepticism of
                     the Great Sacred Narrative

       is considered sacrilegious
       looked upon as blasphemous
              and is every bit as forbidden
                            as inquiry or debate

while judiciousness and wisdom
                     are zealously replaced
by an unwavering blind allegiance
and obedience   to an ill-advised faith
              in the outsourcing of cognition.


In ages of unreason
purposely provoked emotions
       are routinely sent on missions
to extinguish  the sin of clear thinking

and to either hijack or bypass intelligence
with a view to boosting the mad attraction
                            of mindless genuflection

       to dangerously fashionable
                            acutely irrational cults
       which though humourless
       would — if personified — resemble
                            self-destructive clowns

              because sadly  the funny thing
              about foolish and stupid is this:
                     the worse things get
                     the more they double down.


2

Just outside the brave new state
       religion's  mental prison's gates
              chanted mantras can be heard
for the asinine slogans they are

while imbecilic rituals and rites
                     are righteously observed
by the groupthink-cloistered faithful
faithfully inside
the bounds of what must be believed in

       in this dumbfounding age
       of profoundly pernicious unreason
              — in this   the latest iteration
              of humanity's great derangement.





NOTE:

This poem, along with "It's Never Sold as Something Ugly", could be taken as bookends in what could be seen as a nine poem series.

That being said, while thematically connected, all nine poems are nonetheless complete in themselves, which is to say, can be read on their own. Additionally, except for poems 2, 4, 6 and 8, all are entirely independent, stand-alone poems.

The series was published here chronologically. This poem is the first in the series.