Though the Mother is hurting,
Whether by natural entropy,
Or by human hands,
Most refuse to see it,
Like scolded children,
We put on our blinkers,
As if in denial,
Ignoring the fumes and fires,
As the skies grow crimson,
And the seven seas boil,
We’re all peeking through fingers,
Witnessing our own ends,
But will nobody wield those same hands,
Just maybe,
And save the world.
When it’s time to animate the ink,
I require ore of an inimitable nature,
To fuel my furnace,
So I mine down into my brain,
Struggling with the bedrock,
The quarry walls of normalcy,
Sanity is too rigid,
Too adamantine,
It blunts my cerebral pickaxe,
The mineral is unrefined and bland,
Giving up,
Instead I descend into lunacy,
That restricted pit,
To transcend this mundanity,
It’s the only way,
Here the material is ever more singular,
Gleaming colours that never were,
Containing ideas the world has never seen,
Ever I tunnel into this hoard singing,
Declaring I am a lunatic,
Gladly so.
Sometimes,
When all else has failed,
There can only be one reply,
One reaction to a debacle,
A boilerplate response,
Prearranged for just this type of heartbreak,
Chiselled into my tongue,
Cached away like a trump card,
‘I’m fine,
I’m alright,
Don’t worry about me,
It’ll be better next time’,
These foreordained threads of speech,
Spat out while tears encroach,
They’re a smokescreen,
Designed to protect the guilt of another,
A witless stratagem,
Sadly exhibited on a piece of rusted brass.
Assembling a life is no meagre feat,
Let me tell you,
These are not simple machines,
Their intricacies are myriad,
To form a working product,
It will take the heavy industry of your actions,
Sweat blood and ore,
There is no prototype phase,
You’ve got one shot,
Only one budget of heartbeats exists,
So solder your connections wisely,
And god forbid any bolts are loose,
Too many are already upon the scrapheap,
That pile of obsolescence.
The Earth strives to heal,
From the corruption of warfare,
Still wounded decades later,
Still polluted by the arsenic of empires,
From the minds of old men,
Did these scars across the land come,
Painted by bone shards and blood of the young,
Spread by the quills of artillery and lead,
Many souls died here,
Laid to rest in craters,
Mother Nature lies beside them in solidarity,
Mourning for the industrial slaughter,
And the planet still weeps,
Those tears of acid rain,
She hates those old men,
And endeavours to right their wrongs.
The smith sweats,
An armsworker,
Doing the work of shinigami,
Machining thanatos into steel,
Ore becomes death,
A masterwork,
An emotionless tool,
A cold weapon,
A true lifetaker,
A stygian masterpiece,
Harnessing thunder and hellfire,
The power of hades,
The power to take lives,
In one hand or two,
Exerting ones will through iron,
Stocks and smoking barrels,
Breathing fire and ash,
Charon on a bullet,
A life snuffed out,
The gunsmiths work complete,
Can he claim neutrality?
Does this artisan care whose life is ended?
Does this merchant burden himself with ethics?
Does this artist care how his art is wielded?
Is the dollar worth more than a life?
I’ve seen the elite,
A cartel of tuxedo players,
Vultures around a board held aloft by we the people,
They play monopoly above us,
Playing for borders and lives,
Among red buttons and whiskey,
An oligarchy of a smoking room,
Perfume of toxic fumes,
Product of industry,
A effluvium of poor mens moans,
Sounds of pickaxes and canaries,
Walls of blood diamonds,
The pieces are made of flesh,
Shaped like batons and warmachines,
And cry for help as they shift,
Beholden to old men,
Liars in chief,
Tycoons of trepidation,
They have played this boardgame for centuries,
From pyramids to railways,
From aeroplanes to the moon,
We have been pawns for too long,
What happens if we all stand up?
And knock their game over.
I remember school as a manufactory,
A foundry for the young,
To be sculpted into the old,
Youthful discord refitted into social compliance,
Uniforms of uniformity,
Lecturing puppeteers,
Classrooms become mills,
Blackboards of dry routines,
Working on student models,
Thirty at a time,
Calling the register for indoctrination,
Orthodoxy faculty,
Grades fed into syringes,
To boost the addiction,
To narrow-minded success,
Creative glitches are patched out,
Rainbows must become grey,
Scholarly technicians,
This dread factory,
Churns out perfect little socialites,
Parochial suits and skirts,
All ready for the meat grinder,
You must all think the same.
Life is a rusty pier,
Ruined by the eons,
With a meat grinder at the end,
A slaughterhouse on the river styx,
Bladed rollers slavering for gore,
Put there by a deific butcher,
The railings are strewn with warnings,
Attempting to mitigate our doom,
Yet they seem to be in languages,
Unknown to us,
Tongues of hope and diligence,
The wave below mock us,
Hissing jeers,
And throwing insults of mist,
The sea knows all as they say,
We’re given birth at the beginning,
In blood and pain,
Tagged with an expiration date,
Only to traverse this pier,
Towards further agony,
Further despair,
Meat for the industrial hunger,
More meat,
And more,
Ad infinitum.
WorldofHarley 