III

Trending towards a kind of darkness

Towards a sickness cyclical

Advertised with slickness cynical

A vision miserable before our eyes

A mission crucial missive missing

Love letters left under alphabetical duress

Hungers unaddressed while numbers confess

Undressed and left unadorned in our nakedness

While coughing up infectious drivel

Reaching masses that remain critical

Making arrangements of organs visible

Participation in a system once held civil

Living in worm-tongued taped-shut mouths

Bugs with the names of features shout

Creatures crawling, squirming out

Of guts and brains once cared about

In the names of intuitions poisoned

Wells of sorrow deeply dug

In rows of corpse-lined red tomorrows

Heat under the worlds we scorched

And in the tongues of torch-led feeders

Comes the cries of “useless eaters”

Accusations like insides jumbled, crumbled up

Huddled masses piled

Witnessing the new colossus stones

Each panel worn and comic torn

And paint stripped off and meaning born

Aborting promises of yore

On the horizon of a still-born faith

An offering, a tithing plate

A place to wash our world in hate

An antichrist, a reprobate

A sinner dipped in passions rare

Draped in Babylon's crimson fare

Bringing the disease, writhing

Stabling all the horsemen there

Trending towards a kind of ending

A finality caught in breathless envy

How fortunate justice remains blind

How unfortunate she lags behind

In lazy arcs and furtive glances

We wait to see if we will stand

Behind her or at her grave

Or if we will join her in the end

In the names beneath that vital paper

A memory of all to be that was

Of a promise many lived and died for

And of the tyranny the many chose

III

"I've seen my world change, and then go back to where it came."

- I Never Wanted by As I Lay Dying