ON DEATH (AND HUMANITY)

My dearest brother, to whom I have never met

Please indulge me, as we share this letter of regret

I regret to inform you of your very own death

Between the cosmos, a divine theft

For we who remain stand firm on resolve

To remember those, and never absolve

this game of endless chance

as we play and dance

with the capitalist communist; the religious atheist

the agnostic extremist, and the moderate anarchist

Light candles in lanterns, like stars

fires in the skies, like millions of little fireflies

A waltz through the ballet, the crack of the skull

the snap of a ginger man, the crushing of woes

and then you’d speak:

but brother how, what do you say?

what is this world, from so far away?

Nothing but a fantasy:

A sleepless dream, a restless night

a shambled death, a broken life,

That which spreads like a cancer, slaughtering without discrimination

no mercy to be found except by the forces of eternal damnation

a wizard is not a mentor but a disguised commander

lead me not into battle to shoot my retreat

like crystal shards into the backs of me and my fellows

They say the shed of blood makes us brothers in arms

but he who spills the blood of his fellow brother, can be nothing but the enemy himself

 and forfeits his kinship to me for I will avenge

my comrades who lay dead in the trenches

if not in war, then more importantly in principle

if not dead by God, then in terms that be allegorical

And so, we write on with the quill, the blood the ink,

a sombre reflection, that is the intent

that we stand here today and pray before the blindfold

as the guns ring out a final salute – and punish the desertion

Death: the desertion of our humanity.