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The Crimson Creed

We know the primal aggregate,
Self-molded at the start of time,
Before the Big Bang uppercut
Made all the cosmic flotsam rhyme.

We know that two plus two is five.
The world’s alive because of chance…
That flash when slime and time arrive
And Science blesses the expanse.

Yes, endless years and circumstance
Created everything we see,
From clockwork galaxies that dance
To sky and sea and you and me.

And now we’re all in this together—
A rich, communal neighborhood.
We control the world and weather.
We govern for the greater good.

If you, the blind,  don’t see the light
That shines from our inviting door,
We’ll take you in, so just sit tight,
We’re growing fat. We eat the poor.

For nothing stops the march of justice.
We’ll blow the low to smithereens.
Decide if you will fight or trust us.
Your end will justify our means.

.

.

Cain

Have you felt a chill of sure destruction,
A limpid, limbic, still, unending dread,
A useless feel, no fight-or-flight compunction,
An open jail with bars inside your head.

Every word you see or hear’s been chosen
By functionaries filling in dark forms.
Free-thinking’s meaning’s taken and unfrozen,
Remolded, made to fit accepted norms.

Free-thinker’s minds are carefully curated
To hold  the chosen truths we’re meant to air.
Everyone’s an island, unrelated—
Free-thinkers all… asunder, everywhere.

.

.

Mike Bryant is a poet and retired plumber living on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

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31 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Mike, these are two exceptional poems with the scintillating satire and rhyming words that reverberate in my mind. “Free-thinker’s minds are carefully created” is both alliterative and striking imagery! Both are extremely well done, my friend.

    Reply
  2. jd

    Enjoyed both very much, Mike, despite their creepy truths because they are well written.

    Reply
    • Mike Bryant

      Thank you JD, I probably spend too much time trying to discern truth. Sometimes the words just flow though, don’t they?

      Reply
  3. Warren Bonham

    You’ve created some classic lines that really strike home. The poor are being consumed and it should be apparent to everyone, other than those who are truly blind who perversely think that we’re blind. It’s a crazy world we live in.

    Reply
    • Mike Bryant

      Thanks Warren, I have a feeling you have a pretty good idea of the troubling things happening behind the scenes… it’s your poetry that gives me that feeling.

      Reply
  4. Norma Pain

    Crazy good poetry for crazy bad times. I especially liked “The Crimson Creed”. Thanks Mike.

    Reply
    • Mike Bryant

      Thank you Norma. I’ve gotta say that Susan came up with that title. She also helped me put the lines in an order that made a bit more sense. And yes these are the craziest of times. The crazy thing is that many think that everything happening today is just hunky dory.

      Reply
  5. Jeff Eardley

    Mike, you have an editor to die for. I loved both but particularly “The Crimson Creed.” I am currently re-reading the amazing, “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams, published 42 years ago. This amazing book postulated that the answer to the riddle of life, the universe and everything was….42. Thanks for two great poems today.

    Reply
    • Mike Bryant

      Thanks Jeff, Yes, I’m lucky as all get out to have such a beautiful, intelligent poetic collaborator. I haven’t read “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” maybe I should read it 42 years from now!

      Reply
  6. Cynthia Erlandson

    Very cleverly done, Mike! I especially like “The Crimson Creed.” (And aggregate/uppercut is an extremely grin-producing slant-rhyme. I mean that in a good way.) Its final stanza is a slam-dunk!

    Reply
    • Mike Bryant

      Thanks Cynthia, I figure that if I’m going to use a slant rhyme, I want it near the beginning of the poem. As I said above, Susan came up with the title and helped me delete a couple of unnecessary verses! My favorite part is, “We eat the poor” because poor Americans are in real trouble… we all already know where the money is going.

      Reply
  7. C.B. Anderson

    Mike, you’ve always had a knack for going for the jugular, but I have a feeling that you will soon be going directly at the carotid.

    Reply
    • Mike Bryant

      Thank you, C.B. I am too direct. Hmmm, maybe I could skip the carotid and just go a few steps past it. I wonder where that would be.

      Reply
      • Mike Bryant

        I’m already well past that point, C.B. or below it…

  8. Brian A. Yapko

    Both of these poems are incredible, Mike — beautifully crafted and with deep insight on very complex issues. I won’t choose a favorite because they’re both great for different reasons. The Crimson Creed is a brilliant summation of the causes and creeds of Wrong-Sized Science. Science is terrific — it answers so many question — but when it denies the existence of God and the morality that is attendant to God’s existence — when it denies that Creation (including Science) was created by, and subject to, a Creator –then all manner of atrocities become possible. Crimson atrocities. Your end justifying my means. Brilliant and chilling!

    I love the title of “Cain.” Am I not my brother’s brainwasher? And executioner? How chillingly you portray the way we are carefully managed by those who teach us what to think. This is, of course, an old, old story for how else do you get people to think it a good thing to sacrifice their children in ancient Assyria; how do you get people on board with ideas like slavery or genocide (a word that has been abused of late.) The Inquisition shows that there have always been thought-police. There is something particularly disgraceful about it in its present incarnation, however, Perhaps it’s the fact that it is so voluntarily promulgated through social media coupled with the vile, cynical, self-satisfied and self-important belief that people are actually promoting “the greater good.” Leftists are poisoned by a chillingly smug confidence in their thinking without ever once considering how they’ve been spoon-fed every bonkers thought within their heads. What gets me is how desperately they clutch onto their ideologies even when proven destructive and false. They leave claw-marks.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Brian, I recall something that a conservative writer said back in the 1960s. Liberals always claim that they have “open minds.” The writer replied “Their open minds are always closed at one end.”

      Both of these poems by Mike are powerful refutations of the left-liberal self-description that they are “tolerant” and “open to debate” and — the biggest lie of all — that they want “diversity.” This is why the poem “Cain” is so effective. It points out the utter fraudulence of such people calling themselves “free thinkers” when in plain fact they have done everything in their power to stifle and suppress any viewpoints contrary to their own.

      “The Crimson Creed” is a deft revelation of how our current rulers think. And the last quatrain makes one’s blood run cold: they are perfectly willing to kill us if we disobey.

      These poems frighten me, which is good, because sometimes that is what a poem must do. I just hope more people wake up and realize that untrammeled rule by left-liberals is going to involve mass murder.

      Reply
      • Mike Bryant

        Thanks for the kind words, Joe. I’m glad the poems are scary. I’m not sure why I’m not having nightmares about the sorry state of the world. There are many parallels between America today and prewar Germany, but I believe you are correct that the parallels between today and Pre-Bolshevik Russia… maybe even Bolshevik Russia are closer. It is uncanny that the Russians have become the new Christian Nationalists at the same time we are becoming Socialist/Fascists!

    • Mike Bryant

      Brian, thank you. I also appreciate your careful analysis of the poems. I really like your observation about the title “Cain” because I thought it might be too obscure. You are pretty spot on, however I might still have an Easter Egg or two hiding out.
      Fortunately, there is one government out there that has perfect solutions for all that ails us.

      Reply
  9. Mark Stellinga

    Mike, very impressive pieces both. BTW – sounds like you and your editor are quite close! 🙂 What makes ‘their’ tactics even more terrifying is – in order to pull off what they’ve managed to thus far they have to know precisely HOW to go about it! None of this F’n BS is a by-product of either fecklessness or stupidity. The pure evil in their destructive agenda is literally incredible. Glad U 2 R on our side. “Hi” to Susan.

    Reply
    • Mike Bryant

      Thanks so much, Mark. Yes, Susan is my one and always. I believe that we’ll all be ok as long as we find ourselves on the side of the guy on the white horse.

      Reply
      • Mark Stellinga

        Unless that guy is actually riding a white-rhino! How hard the Texas legislature is fighting to turn Texas ‘Blue’. I can’t see that happening at this point, but it’s worked too well in states like Colorado, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, and even Georgia to some degree to not fight back, HARD! Fortunately, we Iowans have a very large populist shield, but then again – so did MN! Enjoy your week –

  10. Daniel Kemper

    Not much to add to the rightful praise already given. Great lines– especially liked: “We’re growing fat. We eat the poor.” and “Your end will justify our means.” Satire on the level of “A Modest Proposal.” Your poems show the banality of evil quite well–nothing new under the sun.

    Idiosyncratically, the first poem tangented me to the album, “In the Court of the Crimson King,” by King Crimson. (Who else?) Too many good lines there, but here’s one semi-random connector: “Knowledge is a deadly friend
    If no one sets the rules / The fate of all mankind I see / Is in the hands of fools…”

    Back to the main. Another line I liked was the set up to one of my favorites, “If you, the blind, don’t see the light / That shines from our inviting door, /
    We’ll take you in, so just sit tight.” That brought in an all-too-real spookiness. Reminded me, even more weirdly maybe of the Dead Kennedy’s, “California Uber Alles.”

    Reply
  11. Margaret Coats

    So much to like in this dystopian credo, Mike! I remember a cartoon portraying a worshipper at an altar with Darwin’s picture above it. The cosmology you present here did evolve from his biology, but the fun of it is the truth showing through. You start with the Aggregate instead of the Almighty. The angelic music of the spheres may not appear, but the cosmic flotsam rhymes anyway. And there’s Intelligent Design in the clockwork galaxies.

    Not to leave out the threatening qualities, I notice the headless iamb placing the accent on “we” in “WE control the world and weather.” And WE insist on adherence to the Crimson Creed. Therefore “justice” in the final stanza means giving everyone his due in accord with this bloody belief.

    In “Cain” I see less the murderer who failed to be his brother’s keeper, than the utterly despondent individual aware that he is expelled from society, and who fears that everyone he meets will kill him. Aloneness is the picture you paint in the final line, “Free-thinkers all . . . asunder, everywhere.” We can remember when “freethinkers” were people with views that naturally led them to exile themselves from the relative Eden of social interaction among most others. There was a true distinction of belief. You picture instead “freethink” as “groupthink” in which thinking itself is feared and exiled by non-thinkers. Bleak warning to all who favor courtesy or rational persuasion.

    Reply
    • Mike Bryant

      Thanks Margaret. I appreciate your close look at these. It is interesting that groupthinkers believe they are freethinkers. Nice catch.

      Reply

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