“prayer” & reflection

clasp­ing hands to­geth­er,
get­ting down on their knees,
squint­ing eyes closed
(in de­cent light­ing which cer­tain­ly
doesn’t call for such ac­tion),
con­cen­trat­ing on that thing in­side
the most ir­ra­tional­ly des­per­ate parts of
their mind,
they be­gin to talk to them­selves,
be it an in­ter­nal di­a­logue
or ac­tu­al, phys­i­cal, mut­ter­ing
just loud enough so
for some rea­son,
they can hear them­selves do­ing it &
on top of it all,
out­side speak­ing to a fan­ta­sy that
they per­pet­u­ate
by in­dulging in the same fic­tions
which so many have be­fore them,
they go on to
at­tribute some greater, col­lec­tive,
all-in­clu­sive, warm &
“unique­ly hu­man”
char­ac­ter­is­tics
to events which are said to war­rant
such tru­ly in­signif­i­cant time spent—
for on­ly alone
does a con­cept of re­flec­tion
ac­tu­al­ly hold wa­ter,
since any kind of group­ing to­geth­er of
hu­mans, breeds a
mass men­tal­i­ty—
so, to what end does this mad­ness
flow?
what be­comes of so many in­di­vid­u­als
pre­tend­ing that their in­fan­tile
squint­ing & hop­ing
squint­ing & hop­ing
amounts to any­thing more than a
fart in the wind?