Rescued, Hoodwinked, Then Marooned – by Olugu Olugu Orji

We came in legions and hordes

Distraught, distressed and at great odds

Seeking absolution, desperate for healing

For a foul conscience and this numbness of feeling

We came laden with tokens of our listless journeying 

Glittering contraptions and acquisitions of mammon’s offering

Clad in the fake aura of earth’s fading glory

We traversed howling deserts: that elixir of vainglory

The chalice of human capability remained empty

The cost of maintaining this charade: prohibitively hefty

We longed to quench the thirst for life’s missing meaning

To be rid of the crushing burden of sin’s unrelenting underpinning

We came shattered and in tatters

Barely surviving the endless drift in death infested waters

Despaired of life, dispossessed of hope

Condemned to be stretched beyond our ability to cope

We reaped the bounties of flouting the eternal warning

Victims in the unceasing deadly celestial wrangling

With the last installment of strength and inflamed desire

We clawed towards our prospective messiah

That awe-inspiring agent of magnanimous divinity

Though clad in the gaudy vestment of errant humanity

Splayed at his feet and devoid of every pretension

We grovelled in undisguised contrition

Longing for the manna of the indestructible life

Craving the privilege to surmount all strife

Seeking audience with the true essence of our being

And making supplication to the all-Seeing

We were fed with the bread of life abiding

We drank freely of the well of joy unending

Immersed in the pool of peace beyond definition

And buoyed by the reality of love’s ultimate consummation

We took our first faltering steps on the journey to Certainty

Our blurred gaze fixed on things that belong in eternity

With increasing strength and sharpening vision

Raiding the enemy’s enclave became our sworn vision

Rescuing lives stripped of dignity and harmony

Compatriots arrested by sin’s hideous hegemony

Then we discovered the messiah’s affliction of shifting passion

Yesterday’s junk and dung crawling back into commission

Texts and homilies of dubious imprimatur

Contending with Holy Writ as inerrant tutor

Garbled ranting aggregated into the inspired book

Jaundiced justifications approximating gobble-de-gook

Since service to mammon is forbidden

We forged a decree to compel it to do as bidden

Forced into an accommodation as Elohim’s subservient neighbour

Mammon became the anointed token of divine favour

“To best the world” became the frenzied chorus

“They have no right to live larger and better than us!”

We abandoned the fate of perishing souls

To acquire the privilege of expensive soles

We strayed far from the mores of the kingdom

Bewitched by the lure of ephemeral stardom

We must return to the Rock we were hewn from

To survive Armageddon’s looming storm

© Olugu Olugu Orji mnia; nnanta2012@gmail.com , oluguorji.wordpress.com