In long cemetery rows
We broke our backs to sow these tilling fields—

Nourishing them with rivulets of blood,
And panicked sweat—

Gun shells sprouting nooses
Make hardened, apathetic blooms—

And we wonder why the fruit is poison—
Giving seeds room to germinate,

In the name of individualism
In the name of industry,

In the name of law,
In the name of order—

In long cemetery rows
We broke our back to sow the killing fields—

To drown out the pain
As weakness leaving having over stayed—

Asking what’s wrong with me
As the lines get deeper,

On foreheads and wrists,
In unemployment offices and churches

We still spit on charity
Ever feeding the sodden ground,

Weakness does not ask control
But only respite

Strength asks for status quo
To overcome and fight,

A test for the True American,
Whatever face becomes this myth,

To be born classless into this stratum of wealth
To indulge humanly and face the consequences

To chase desire and be punished for it
To be the casualty of ideologies

So far removed from what belly and skin want
To ignore the rumblings and twitching—

Who does till these killing fields
But those meant to die there?

While the quartermaster, on hills
Where treaties are to be drawn,

Strips away the olive branch,
Tween him and the planters,

As he waits for the whites of their eyes
To collide as the unthinkable:

An unmanageable force of nature,
The hatred sowed in those killing fields.

But, until then, we drain every last bit
From ourselves, fighting over a dying earth.

Roll out all the fuel we need let’s burn the machine
That could have brought peace.