Nietzsche Told Me

What if the only God is dead?
Will you spend a tear or laugh?
Will you run up a cliff and jump?
Or Study Sophia's craft?

In Sophia's mind you will learn
That you can still live and die--
A project that's all-too-human--
Without telling yourself a lie.

Because there is no truthfulness
In the cross or in the divine;
Only repression, guilt, and shame;
Only that brutal fear of Wine.

There is vice in human passion;
There is 'form' in human intellect
All you need to have is the Art
That controls so soft yet direct.

Put your eyes in view of beauty,
your hands in the canvas of joy,
Your lust in honest enjoyment--
Devoted, at the same time coy.

What then is the Art of being?
It is being an Over-man!
A man who thinks without a God,
Who wills his being a human.

It is not at all unjust pride,
Not even destructive power;
It is nobly affirming life
Where your art is your own master.

So listen to Philosophy--
That joyful wisdom in man's heart--
And you'll discern that you must be,
In God's absence, still smart.