Rotted hollow stumps grow greeting
Minds like yours and mine to meeting
Might and menace - the men retreating
From utter, bar none, monsters beating

Of hearts so strong and weak, along
To stringent thrums they croon our song
They part and in this place belong
Some rightful seat to wax and wrong

In love and scorn, in thoughts alone
Of deeds repaid and sins atoned
Upon the glim we fling the stone
And call aloft to steer us home

But not the blood home whence our birth
Nor still the foster touch of earth
- The flames unfit, the skies in dearth -
Instead on stanchions of our worth

Beneath twin pools of muck and ire
Beneath two more: The beast; The fire;
Ceaseless straits of optic mire
Rivers down and up the spire

From our aft the wire emerges
The string'ed puppet craft from urges
Our safety ropes - A net converges
Upon we fall in chants and dirges

Through gaps astride we tears fall
Side by ****** side from all
Our tide of eyes will cue the call
The masses' fist to uninstall

Yanked aside like rotting weeds
Our amalgam minds took-root recedes
The might has died, the menace bleeds
Our wants - They are this monster's needs