73. Buddhism Spreads

Another man

Who came from great origins

Formed a new religion.

Four visits

Four visions

The old man said I have lived.

The thin man said this is humanity.

The corpse said I was once alive.

The holy hermit said I was once like you.

He fell from lofty heights

In remorse and new enlightenment.

He rejected old decedent ways

To go on a pilgrimage through his land.

He talked with many people

As he travelled the Middle Way.

His religion of enlightenment flowed throughout the world.

He found patronage in India.

That’s where it began.

He spun the wheel of Dharma

With his sermon to the five.

He wandered through India

Continuing his quest.

In an abandoned jungle

Sitting in the shade of his little tree,

He thought,

He meditated,

Until he understood everything.

Disciples to spread it further

Preaching to others

Who preached to others and so on.

The religion continued to spread

Through China in the north,

Through Korea to Japan in the east,

Through Cambodia in the south.

All adopted this new religion.

Spirituality flowed out

Like the peaceful branches of the mighty Bodhi tree

Into the world of heavenly light.

71. Prologue III

With the death of Rome and her son
The world passed onto a new age.
Greece gave us democracy.
Rome gave us republic.
Philosophy and science
Made the world real.
Thousand year empires disappear
Into the ancient dust and ruins of the past.
Religious service
Turned cathedrals gothic
As they threw out old gods
In place of saints and symbols.
Dynasties pass
As Ozymandias statues of Zeus and Athena wear and erode.
Slowly eaten away by acidic rain.
Leaders rise up then they fall
Only to bring in new ones.
“King of kings am I,” the dragon said.
Then came a Greek
Saying “He is dead.”
“King of kings am I,” The Greek one said.
That all changed
With Rome’s crown on her head.
“Queen of Queens, am I,” Rome herself once said.
Now, with Caesar,
She rests her head.
No one worships these forgotten gods.
They play on in fantasy
As ghosts of bygone times.
I wish to stay to play with them
But the muse begs me to push on.
Future pages await.
There are new Ozymandiases to behold
Otherwise they’ll remain unwritten.

70. Byzantium

Alas poor Rome!

Your time has come!

No longer will your glory be enjoyed.

The eastern empire lived on in your son Byzantium.

In their time they split from the old Roman church.

They kept the literature

That used to lull old Rome to gentle sleep.

He combined religion and government.

A monarchy was created to rule the new Rome.

Mosaics ornately clothed his young body

As it glowed with religious fortitude.

Soon threats to Rome’s son came as well.

He became sick with civil war.

Changing his body structure forever.

The weakened boy found himself surrounded.

As he groped in internal pain

Sassanids, Slavs and Lombards all came

Taking little pieces of him

Utill he was no more.

46. Persia Becomes an Empire

Out of the ancient deserts

Where sphinxes lived in mudbrick temples

There arose a benevolent winged king.

His name was Cyrus the Great.

He hatched a dragon in the land of Media.

Under the guise of religious revival.

The dragon he called Persia.

Persia quickly grew

As it swallowed up nations and old empires

The dragon swallowed the rest of Media as a snack

Then picked the bones clean of Assyria

It was a nice appetizer.

Following the Tigris and Euphrates

He had Babylon for dinner.

For desert the dragon found Anatolia’s delight

Picking his teeth clean with Egypt and Israel.

Under Cyrus and his sons

There was tolerance.

The dragon didn’t discriminate.

He didn’t ask his new foods to be digested into the new country

They liked him for it

As they wrote pages praising him

In history and religion.