Member Poem

“Thou shalt not kill”, 

Methinks, was not meant for the
killings in the name of God,
Nor defending one’s faith
or a promised land.

They say, if the cause is noble
It won’t be a crime,
It won’t be a sin!

(“Oh! What a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive.”*)

So, give me but a cause, an ideology,
a nation to die for, or even a big lie**…
And, I’ll have a license to kill.

I’ll be a patriot
I’ll be a martyr
I’ll wage a holy war
I’ll begin a jihad
I’ll embark on a crusade.

Let my victim be someone’s son
or someone’s brother or father
Mother, daughter or wife --
Why would I care? My cause is noble!

Yeah, praise and glory will all be mine,
I can already see
the pearly gates of heaven …
The heaven shall be mine!

Or tell me, who shall we turn to?
Who can help clarify?
Moses had it easy…
God, it seems, does not reside
on Mount Sinai, anymore.

* Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field, Sir Walter Scott.
* *The German expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, to describe the use of a lie so ‘colossal’ that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously”.