I tried to stand upright, right-side-up, forwards

In a downward, muddled, spiraling, upside-down, backwards world.

I entangled lie with truth, truth with lie,

Head over heels, heels over chest,

Heart over head, matter over mind.

Thrust into a Babel land of Babylonian babblings.

Backwards.

Which way around was I?

If I walk on my elbows and speak with my knees,

Sigh with my fingers, and wink with my feet

How can this be?

If I think with my heart and feel with my mind,

Decide all my outcomes with stogies and wine,

Gamble my life for a blank pair of dice,

Which way around would I be?

If I chopped off my fingers, usurped them with toes,

Rearranged both of my eyes, ears, and nose,

Ripped out my heart, sewed it onto my sleeve,

Which way around would I be?

What are order and morality,

What place demands thinking, in which should you feel,

Should I take offense at everything?

Is this the way all should be?

Should I live a life in a different name,

Treat all of creation like some kind of game?

Could I take my identity, scrap it, transpose

My order to depths of which nobody knows?

Within my cranium, seventy-three,

Different options of who I can be

At least in school that's what they told me,

But when I examine things critically

All I see is a twisted, messed up, backwards

Facsimile of reality.

We're told we are free to do as we please,

But the heart is deceitful, filled up with greed,

The darkness feeds all of our depravity.

The world and its members are lost in its hold.

Don't listen, don't listen, don't listen!

But we're told to obey

To suffer to ourselves.

That the self brings satisfaction is a laughable thing,

The self is the pinnacle, self is the king. Pah!

That's a confounded ridiculous thing,

For when I look inward all that I see is

Darkness, pride, murder, hate, sin.

But it's impossible to see if you're imprisoned

The possibility that you could be forgiven,

For what would you have to be forgiven for?

To you, you are guiltless, a "good person", pure.

But to God we are evil, not one has a chance,

A gamble, though possible, vain in advance.

There is only one way to live, not by luck of the draw,

Nor trivial virtues, nor identity's thrall.

But one name, Jesus, which is above every other,

In whom we find a calling unlike all others.

To be saved, you must repent and believe,

Throw off the old self, and put on the new.