The Cannonball

Thoughts about religion, and inspired by The Breeders biggest hit.

The whistle emits a screech as the cannonball rolls down the walk
Quickly it departs into the bluegrass, over the apologists that talk

Mowing down these straw men into the hay bales they deserve to be
While the memorable bass line plays, the girls dance around with glee

They dance around for s***s and giggles, no more reason than that
Better than lying naked with the a*s in the air, the chest pressed flat

Held prisoner by perverted inquisitors with eyes emitting rage
Suddenly comes the cannonball to turn it over to the next page

Call it Epicurius, call it Hume since the problem has been redefined
Flattened at first but the corpse rises since the human will is inclined

To take up superstition as our so-called rationalizations allow
And then impress them virally on everybody else somehow

Be it through the tool of witness or the tool that fires projectiles
And leaves heaps of statistics on the ground in tall, bloody piles

But Malthus's prediction about the future bombed, inventory refilled
Yet all innocents are hereby found guilty and then summarily killed

Since they followed the cannonball and became heathen breeders
Sardonically, they became the Abrahams of freethought seeders

Planting ideas based on the notions of logic, science and reason
It was time to cure this disorder over a perpetual sowing season

But the corpse reigns on a seat of lies, secrets and pedophilia
And the defenders of the faith have wantonly raped Cordelia

In the abstract and in the corporeal, both ways sanctioned by
A sadist who has the submissive altar server undo his fly

But, the cannonball and a million more of his metallic brothers
Break down those metaphysical Bastille walls, out come mothers,

Daughters, sons and fathers, all folks practicing in name only
No longer does hypocrisy bother them, no longer are they phony

There will come a day where disbelief shall utterly strike the roots
Even though the branches are being hacked at by a thousand coots

The Jeffersonian maxim enacted and all the righteous fight hard
This imagined cannonball, all these members carry the card

We the people, we the nonbelievers, are here to say our piece
Get the f**k away from here, and let us return to the prior peace

And the zombie wanders away to the desert, the dustbin of the mind
And the zombie stands alone and effervesces with the sands of time

The cannonball retraces the path to where the apologists were dashed
If offers them spiritual guidance based on reason, free of cost and cash

And this cannonball of wonder motions another time around that yellow star
We, this group called humankind, has finally evolved so very, very far

Away from the times where religion held us in shackles until our dying breath
Away from the times when statistics were measured in bodies with open jest

But the cannonball was fired at the right moment like a popping cork
Religion has met its rightful match, the cannonball is the serving fork

The nonbelievers bid you farewell, it was a game and it was so much fun
But the fork has been pressed into your chest, you are officially done!

Author's Note