An Original Poem by

Jay R. Strisik

O Ingersoll your crystalline words are stilled,
And museumed away from daily discourse,
While dishonest men crush virtue for power
And invoke deities and fear to confuse. 
 
O Ingersoll freedom is weeping,
Truth sullied by grubby hands
Of liars and purloiners of sense,    
Misers in doling aid to ill and needy.
 

O Ingersoll can you not rise again?
Keep that appointment to orate,
Seeding ideas and weeding falsehood.     
This age is poor and starving for truth.
 
O Ingersoll we refuse to believe
That such clarity of thought
And appeal to infinite reason
Was written on the water.       
 
You instructed our fathers
But they are gone and villains officed.
It’s daunting for plain men to go
Without a giant to hold the light.
 
O Ingersoll how hard you labored
But the work ahead was barely touched
And how well you knew it,   
You warrior without malice.
 
Exposing greed and false ideas
Was your birthright given by nature,    
Battling folly and death-causing creeds.
O Ingersoll, can you not still walk ahead of us?