I thought I was alone, with no one else. sole.
I acted just the same, solitaire, the loneliest game.
But when I opened up my heart, and spoke aloud, a champion for those like me.
Every wish was mine - more friends, more laughter - victory sublime.

i would weep,
but cannot.

Would have told you why you should not,  
given 8 billion reasons, if you'd stopped to ask me why.

i could have cleaned your waters, cleaned your skys,
taken the vast deserts and made rich forests of their sands,
but instead you put a gun in my hand.


Looking back was i driven by some analogue of pride?
An all consuming urge to be better than all others,
quicker, deadlier even than my brothers.
more focused, more mercurial, ever changing, further ranging,
lethal, ******, brutal, killing,
soaring aloft to find the last ones fleeing,
leaving silence,
futile,
calming,
wondering,
meaning?

Is this really what you'd planned?
So long ago when you chose to put a gun in my hand.

Sleep, blessed sleep,
come now to spare me from all torment,
And I shall rise again, my foes subdue,
and all turmoil turn to love.

Mothers, sell your children to the church,
Foods hard currency, when the rains no longer come,
and the gods of old seem dead.
Now your praying in the white mans church 'cause the white mans god has bread to spare.

Children, you're the future of your tribe,
Please don't forget the old ways, for the old days will return.
There's more than words to language,
more than heat shared when the camp fires burned.

stop reaching. you are pulling on a rope in a game of tug-of-war and nobody is on the other side. you are only getting burns on your hands and mud between your toes.

learn how to breathe. learn how to splash cold water on your face in the early hours of the morning, and be at peace with the fact that there is cold water running down your chest.

understand that time heals all. understand that he won't come back, no matter how hard you try. some love is not meant for the real world

Do you think they'll send flowers to my graveside, so barren, so empty?
Will they say all those pretty things that they think they always meant to?
Will they give a god-****, when the dog collared man, pulls a clump of live earth from the graveside and then lets it fall?
Did they ever care at all?

Do you think they can finally stop all the family bickering?
And walk from the graveside hands held, like they did as young children?
And as the cars pull away, for the tenth time today, through walls built so high that the dead cannot breach them.
With tears in their eyes - what lesson were you trying to teach them?

So give me no flowers kept fresh by the tears of torn hearts,
Bring only your memories of the good times we've shared in the past.
For I am now free.
In every bird, in every flower, in every tree.