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52 - A Tale of Babel (III)

I was a sick man.

I was a spiteful man.

I was an unattractive man.

Maybe I still am.

But even if I’m attractive now;

Once ugly, always ugly.

Who can look at a woman’s smile,

Knowing they’d never give a smile

If they saw the worst out of your soul?

At that point, love’s better bought,

For my good looks are the equal

To two hundred dollars of makeup.

 

Now I’m straying.

Truth is, though I live in Babel-cloaked Israel,

I still wanted to marry a beautiful woman.

One may laugh if they hear what I think is beautiful

So I won’t say what I find beautiful.

I will say, however, that one should laugh

Because one would probably think she doesn’t exist.

 

Sometimes my heart screams:

 

There’s not one now

Who needs a righteous man.

We now live in a sinner’s world,

Evolve and adapt.

Money now’s in selling sin,

Service unto the flesh.

If you don’t adapt

You’ll surely die.

Because there’s no place for

Righteous men of God.

Israel for sin has made her own laws.

 

But adapt and evolve,

You can be for God in only name.

You can be righteous your mind.

Dress yourself for the world,

But be for God in your mind.

Just don’t walk too far out of line.

And words mean nothing now

All that’s left is right.

The garb of a prostitute’s a chaste dress,

And a chaste dress, a sign of pride

Which says ‘Look at me guys!’

When they can dress like the rest of us,

Why can’t they learn?

Modesty’s not in dress, but in the heart

So wear what you want!

 

Adapt and evolve,

God prefers your love in your mind.

Why work to righteousness,

Don’t you know that’s pride?

More than one, the mass is wise,

What the mass demands,

Is always what God thinks is right.

 

Such is how the heart screams,

Because when a wife enters Solomon’s bed, clothed,

She’d be the weird one out of the five.

But enough of vanities, enough vexations.

For my sanity, there’s a story to be told.

One mad man in sane Babel’s my cross,

But even I have reasons for hope

In spite of my bad start.

 

Now, I will tell you,

I won’t clarify the date,

Just know this happened once upon a time,

When my parents gave me the keys,

And I finally found a measure of peace.

Every room was cleaned out

And I was finally the Lord of my own house.

But though there was peace,

On that first day of living,

While laying on my couch,

I started to do a dangerous thing.

I idled, I started to think.

 

Brother’s in debt, sister too—

And they don’t have a house.

They’re living here with me,

But I received by God,

By Mary’s Most Holy Rosary.

Look at you, Dimas, an Author.

What’s more, a romance author.

Who knew writing self-insert fiction

Could have proved so profitable?

Every story, every tale, with the theme:

Crippled beginnings. Happy Endings.

Goodness knows that’s our Church

Under the Novus Ordo, but—

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK!

 

Thankfully, someone knocked

(Yes, the knocks I thought),

And my monologue stopped.

Kicking my legs I got up,

Walked across the whitewood floor

To the foyer of my house,

And opened the door to a young woman,

Straight in her step, with smiling eyes

Colored like storm-grey skies—

… Know what?

I’m not going to describe my wife

For another guy.

 

Are you surprised?

Looking over these terrible notes,

I said I wanted to marry a beautiful woman.

Past-tense. I already did. Surprise.

Of course, it’s impossible for God

To write love stories without complications,

Which is why I’m writing this one for my sanity.

Where the complications arose.

Well, I was a grave sinner,

Who never deserved a woman like her.

There were relationships beauty and beast,

But ours were like fly and butterfly.

Still, she loved me, and I her.

 

That door, when she knocked on my door,

It was the day of her moving in.