Stained Cloak–RonovanWrites Challenge #71

I maintain that every major religion of the world – Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Sikhism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism – has similar ideals of love, the same goal of benefiting humanity through spiritual practice, and the same effect of making their followers into better human beings. All religions teach moral precepts for perfecting the functions of mind, body, and speech. All teach us not to lie or steal or take others’ lives, and so on.

A Human Approach to World Peace, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

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Devout chant

cloaks authority

stained in red.

∞

Pious words intone

enticing cloak of reasons

stained in cruelty.

∞

The problem of crime in the name of religion is not new.  It just happens that, since the most recent Paris events, my current dose of anesthesia wore off.

Thank you to Ronovan for his prompts: ‘cover’ and ‘colour’, which I used as the synonyms ‘cloak’ and ‘stain’. My first poem uses the 3-5-3 syllable format and the second one uses 5-7-5.  To read more about the challenge, and to find links to other submissions, please visit RonovanWrites.

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Toward calm and shady places I am walking on the earth.

∼Chippewa prayer, date unknown

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