An Atheist Manifesto

[In fond and loving memory of Bertrand Russell, a man who was heavy with the weight of a reasonable life.]
We, who commune together in recognition of godless ground, who do not create but accept reality, who do not judge but are so easily judged, who strain under the burden of a scientific objectivity, we who are, in short, the scum of the earth, the meek and mild -- we are Atheists. We, by definition and linguistic analysis, are: against the concept of God. Our very identity is found in antithesis. We are the anti-Christ.
And, therefore, we manifest ourselves in contrast to the ignorant of the world.
Christianity is characterized by its blind bigotry, arbitrary and manipulative dogma, concealed hatred, and an ever unerring exclusivist descrimination of infinitesimal particularities. Christians -- these who require blind leaps of faith from a nonsensical platform of emotional manipulation, these who take up violent ambitions against the peaceful people of a godless world, these whose words bite so unwittily from mouths envious of freedom -- these must be fought back. The veiling ambiguity of their cloud of unknowing has advanced too far upon our purely physical earth -- now, their hate must be hated, their bigotry must be likewise countered; we, the moral-less, we must utilize our freedom from ethical ties. We must strive to attract their envy in tearing down the structure of their conformist imperatives. I implore you: act out their presumed evil and feel no grief; run all the faster as guilt chases you! Never, brothers -- never let them catch you in despair! We must preserve our image.
I ask you all, murderers of god, to briefly put your trust in me. Unite in this goal with me and the conscienceless devils of all nations -- we must destroy this pseudo-angelic ideology.
We do not attack out of hate -- no, that would be too much like them; we do not strike down out of envy -- no, that is their pill; and we are not seething in this pool of burning impatience and frustration out of guilt or despair -- that is so obviously preposterous as to transcend logical negation.
No, we the pure of purpose, the guiltless hearts, the bloodless hands -- we the killers of god seek only the unadultered truth. Ah, it is our holy plight, but it must be endured! We must endure the holy fools and the holier-than-thous, the heavy depression of an unveiled reality, the listlessness of the abyss -- but we must do more than persevere: we must act, and decisively! We must strive to destroy the crystal balls of fantastic imagination that float, suspended in nothingness, beside us, unaware of the airless space encompassing them. We must strike the fragile, homogenous microcosms of illusioned madness -- for the sake of those poor, blind souls within! Brothers, sons of equation and daughters of chance, natives of Actuality: we are the righteous, the noble, the holy. We seek only that all may come to see clearly in the light of the presumptionless vividity of reason. These who are happier than we are truly objects of pity. We must burst the proverbial bubble and release into the unorganized abyss those noxious gases which drug those within into the scintillatingly false belief that they are happy.
But, amidst such unrestrained pity for the mystically imaginative who cannot see clearly the facts of life through our own scientific scope -- amidst our sympathies, there is room enough -- yes, room enough, even in our vacuum-sealed abyss -- room enough for anger at such obtuseness. Take courage, brethren; such anger in righteous.
These who are holy, superior, drugged; these who are happy, blessed, illusioned; these who see glory, hear promises, feel underneath a blazing irrationality; these whose explanations and arguments display such despicable and cowardly faith and lack of logic -- these are the hell-bound. Be wary, ye Christians -- here ye hell bound have opportunity to accept the most paradoxical of rewards: despair. If you deny the Spirit of the Circle, ye crazy Christians, you will be doomed to a lake of childlike joy forevermore.
These are the hypocrites.......
[We.]
Johannes Antichrist

These Premature Nights (Ode to Friendship)

These premature nights are a drink
Spilled at a well-lit dinner party:
Unexpected, unrequested
And dissolving formlessly in my lap.

Seems something's been lost
Which I cannot put my finger on
Or I'm waiting to regret
An accidental deviation.
The unaltered clouds, white paint
That translucently reveals
The grey-purple cheekbone
Of a divinely silent yet
Somehow spooky entity
Of the all-around -- those clouds
Are more like the daunting chant
Of a confusing savage religion
Or a nihilistic smoke signal
From no one.

On nights like this I can't do anything.
The compounded sounds of my chair's mechanics
And the consistent tapping of my half-crazed obligations
Are a suspended sand castle of an optimistic child --
Secretly crushed by the wind as it pours
Horizontally through a million sleeping leaves.

And, even now, when the world is my brother
Who didn't think out his practical scare
And in fact has caused me to cry --
Even now I want to retreat to you like my mother.
Even now, when the warmth of my pocket
Is my soul's last recluse;
When metaphysical notions are a bright day's deceit
And humanity's movements are mapped mechanics;
When you and the world and everything else
Are all just a reflection in the galactic eye of a puzzling God --
Yes, even now my heart's yearning traverses
This infinite distance which eternally separates
Two specks of soul, distance existing even
When our hallowed bodies collide in holy reunion --
After repetitive dips into melodramatic death
That we act out like my little sister's costume party,
With imagined tea
And everything.

When mistaken nights like these fall into my lap,
The subterranean love reveals to my misty eyes
The distance of necessity.

[The Firstfruits of a Poem]

Hastily erased remains of their silhouetted lesson plan --
The chalky ghosts of their ancestral conceptions
Make me content to attend the formulated funeral
Of a dead education.