The Monster Cometh Daily

No day is an exception. At noon when the sun is nigh, three booming knocks pound upon my cell door and in comes the beast. The beast is eyeless so that it may never see the devastation it wreaks - and then perhaps gain a soul. Never must the beast change for many are those who benefit from the use of it. Both slave and enslaver, it is said no one can stand against him.

With the unrepentant force of one who knows not what one does, the monster swings his club wildly within my cell. Some blows hit and some not - but the terror is always high. The beast has ears but understands no language. What it does hear is the satisfying sound of human wailing - a wailing it knows is necessary but knows not why. So my words are lost. As another piece of hope dies and another pound of flesh taken, the monster recites its phonetic words of misery: "I am the sin of the world," and takes leave to visit the next cell. Such is the way to my daily bread.


It has been deemed that only through the beast may food come. No man, no woman, no child upon this earth may eat without the monster's approval. Its blackmailing behavior forces goodness from mankind, they say, so that we may live well and free. Belief in the beast's necessity is the binding ring of darkness; an artifice of hope. Hell, it is said, is for children and dreamers. Upon these precepts lays our foundation.

Though it's true you may refuse the beast entry it's the slow death of starvation as the only alternative. Each day I struggle with the choice and pray to get out. In here, there is no greater crime than wanting to live. This punishment of sanity drives many souls to madness. But the manmade metal that surrounds me has been perfected through the eons to recreate the hardness of men's hearts. Looking out through the bars of my tiny window I can see in the distance hundreds of signs of the times, one of which unflinchingly declares: Only The Hard Survive!


When the monster is elsewhere, the snakes come in. One snake brought with him the religion of man to save me. "You are hurting, my son," he soothingly slithered, "and I seek to take your pain away. I ask you, do you not believe in God?" "Of course not!" "But you must, my son, you must! Your eternal soul depends upon it. Believe truly in your heart that God loves you and freedom shall be yours!" Like a dope peddler was this snake who called itself holy, selling me the drug of Wishful Thinking. I was about to reply when the three knocks of the beast thundered upon my door causing the snake to bolt upright and say, "See? Here is God now!" And it slithered back through its hole.

All snakes are the same, carrying a message of love for the beast. One snake said it was my responsibility to love the monster because all our great achievements were due to him. Do I want to destroy the world? Another spoke of a club of beast lovers ("Republicans" he said) who worshiped the beast and spoke of its power to crush any enemies. And yet another came with a bribe saying all my beatings would end (but still not leave my cell) so long as I swore to ignore the beatings of others. One even said I lied about having pain from the beatings! Every snake had a lie of its own to share but one thing they did each repeat: that they were once as I was.

They say I'm stupid not to go along with the ways of monsters. The world belongs to the beast so only a fool defies it! The soulless signs, the sly snakes and the seductive sinners plead for me to become as they are. But all this consternation is based upon the illusion the beast will always be. Only for a time can it exist and when it's gone the order of the world will reverse and whoever is most human wins.

That is why every morning when I wake up, I look at the world around me and I say: "Fuck you, world."


Tommy Roe - Dizzy (1969)