Just the Facts

We want to know.
We demand to know why the colour green
has persistently refused any litmus test of reality.
We want to probe the universe with a latex finger
until it coughs up every last sly little secret
it has been withholding from us.
And as for God, if we seriously believed
in that random factor
we would strap him to a table
and probe him to, if we were able.
We insist that the gist of life be explained, labelled
and filed away. All its loose ends tied
neatly around little boxes marked *done with*.
We abhor anything in our pending try
and if the day has any surprises left
we want them to be explained away
as incidental phenomena in the knowledge machine,
not ghosts more an indication of a need for an oil change,
not signs of the inexplicable, but a malfunction
of our sorting equipment. A small administrative glitch
in an orderly cosmos that with some closer attention
we can entirely eliminate from the system.
We can handle the truth
we can manhandle it until it talks
and by god if it refuses, we are going to make it sorry
it ever crossed our minds
and dared to suggest
that there were more things in heaven and earth.
Of course,
we shall keep a few myths and folk-tales around for the kids,
a few fairy stories for childish minds
at least until we can wash their brains out with
a sanitising logic and some deep abrasive hard facts-
some indisputable reasoning that eventually
shall scrub every last residue of wonder from their thoughts.
And when we have caught every last mystery by the balls
until it squeals to tells us all it knows
we shall be triumphantly acknowledged as lords
of our own enlightenment, at least as long
as the batteries in our intensely manufactured technology
are able to keep running on pure bullshit.