The Tailless Monkey
There is no help-but hotch pot!-in the skies
When Astacus sees Crab and Lobster rise
Man has spine, and hopes of heaven-to-be,
Lacks the Amoeba's immortality
What protoplasm gains in mobile mirth
Is loss of the stability of earth.
Matter and sense and mind have their day:
Nature presents the bill and all must pay.
If, as I am not, I were free to choose,
How Buddhahood would battle with The Booze!
My certainty that destiny is "good"
Rests on its picking me for Buddhahood.
Were I a drunkard, I should think I had.
Good evidence that fate was "bloody bad."
-Aleister Crowley (Book of Lies, 1913, Red Wheel/Weiser LLC)