All the prayers I have left, gathered by scraping

out my skull with the most thorough spatula I own,

are those beginning with the vacuously conditional

"If you exist" and ending with an endless asymptotic descent

toward wordlessness. Undead moaning. Whoever,

whatever, if, if—Have mercy! God(s) or goddess(es) loving

or wrathful, intervene! Laissez-faire alien observers,

beam down here and sort us out! Secret government

eavesdroppers, fly-on-the-wall documentarians, awakening

telepaths in my neighborhood, emergent cloud-based

AI consciousnesses, hear my prayer! Be the savior I need.

Narcissistic screenwriter of my life, penning these petitions

in my voice, understand that you have the power,

the responsibility. If I'm shambling and mindless it's because

you wrote me that way. If I'm tragically flawed,

if in this world tragedy is an acceptable ending

it's only because you want to be edgy and get laid.

Hyperdimensional sadist preteen superbeing playing a game

analogous to The Sims, for the love of God

We, an unsaved race called humanity; me, an unsaved

creature of said race—we're here, we're in some sense real,

and we lack the virtue to save ourselves. Somebody, anybody

out there: Hear us, intervene, tyrannically as necessary

like a responsible parent or a good Samaritan or a true hero,

hear us, save us, have mercy. Amen, over and out.