Line me up in your infantry,
I’m a reluctant soldier ready for war.
I give up all of me,
to be one of you.
We need need each other,
we need one another
to fight the battles needed.
Victors and defeated
watch us, dominos fall
one by one, endlessly
disappearing. So
I’ll be forgotten, like the ones buried in dust.

Nobody dreams anymore
Ambition is for the lucky ones,
or the crazies..
I am uninvited to the party.
Left to be moulded by the brutality of them.
Strip away my stray paint
to smooth out this canvas.
Send these sharp edges to the realm of
nonexistence.
This is bootcamp.
This is life.
The blunt reality given to the grateful ones.
No promises made,
no hearts broken,
because we are already.
Where are we?
The sparseness of this space is
overcrowded by voices screaming
out to be released.
The souls of forgotten children, abandoned by bodies of the mature.
Innocence lost, wisdom destroyed.

The battlefield is left with crawling ants,
corpses and cadavers writhing away.
Our lives are just pawns in this game.
Little, to be toyed with
until rattling bones are all that is left.

I am just as skeletal as you.
p