Fleece

Fleecing the gullible few— the credentialed minds who built a god from committee, then knelt before their own invention and called it grace.

If the learned can convince themselves of that, what theorem is safe, what peer-reviewed mirage won't shimmer into gospel by morning?

Not everything transmits, not everything connects— some wires just end in air and we applaud the static.

Man's search for meaning in this small world is a child whispering conspiracies to a doll on a grander scale, perhaps, yet not grand enough to ripple even the ocean's smallest hem.

And if the doll spoke back we wouldn't flinch— we'd canonize the voice, publish the transcript, never once suspecting the hand behind the cloth is ours, has always been ours, the ventriloquist so devoted to the act he's forgotten he is speaking.

We forged the word soul on an anvil of longing and hammered purpose into something we could hold, then stood back astonished as though the earth had offered them— built the cage, lettered its bars with scripture and science alike, and called it a map to somewhere grand.