A grinding narrative
Set on a razor’s edge,
The culmination of a lifetime.
It stutters to a stop
Then crumbles into ruins,
Bones held up by wire.

You don’t put
The gun in your mouth
Because you like the way that it tastes.
It’s a testament
To the will of man
And the progress we have made.
In a sense
We’ve done our best
To lay it all to waste.
So cavalier
And so secure
Dressed in our Sunday finest.

A debt we all must pay,
Bit by bit by agonizing
Pieces of ourselves
To warlords and profiteers
All huddled in dark masses,
Xenophobes and killers.
Commercialized regret
Manufactured in the falsest
Pretense of sorrow.
“Those wretched fools,”
you’ll think,
“All huddled in dark masses,
Ripe for the taking.”
Sycophants and slaves.

Bone soaked in blurry tears,
The matted grey of ashes,
A liturgy on our failings.
Choke down a Eucharist
Of flesh and tinny blood
To find a fragile, fleeting peace.

Crawl back from whence you came, tormentors.
Lie in the bed that you have made.