What began in the spirit, I fleshed out in analytics, and mimicked his voice until I wasn't sure I could actually hear it. The comparisons were subtle pivots compared to more pivotal problems (but that was the problem, and the comparisons didn't solve them). I missed the trees for the forest that dominated my vision – shifted pyramidal positions into a schema that fit my religion. Each schism was a small price to pay for the mission, but I just couldn't convince the critics to listen.

Listen, every decision is infinite. Every compounding incision thickens the cut that started it. When I started tip-toeing with the lusts of the flesh, I thought it was love, and it became exactly that. Hand in hand, dancing in the way of the dragon, heart of man still convinced it was the way of the lamb, and I didn't realize that I had abandoned the path until I finally glanced down at my own two feet

and had the thought that even wolves can learn to bleat like sheep.

Of course it's all selfish ambition and vain conceit. Of course I want you to raise your hands and worship me. Of course notoriety became the centerpiece as my pride continues to believe itself to be the praise of God.

Behind liturgy like a smoke screen we bow down to money and the powers that be and treat one another like competing teams functioning hierarchically and calling the winnings gospel (repeat). And Jesus, indeed, seems to read like a sword that cuts through the family (but he still brings peace to the wealthy though). It's dismissible – I can simply close my eyes to the way that salvation became so closely tied to domination like the way that

God became a literal Trump card.

Okay.

So we joined the ranks of a disenfranchised generation. The counselor called it a combination of coming of age and brainwashing that repeatedly capitulates itself to a posture of self-hate and blame and spirals inward on its own cliche.

There.

The naïveté is so easy to manipulate: you simply call power "blessing" and excommunicate whomever stands in the way.

What changed?

[Guest Verse – JGIVENS]