What happens to identity
When surrender is called?
The wrong side of history
The tiger that’s been mauled.

How do you bear the moniker
Defeated? Enemy?
Now living under their regime
Your choice is? “Happily”.

Wary of the kindnesses
That you rarely receive.
Your hand extends in friendship
but your heart says, “disbelieve”.

Someone else decided for you,
who your foes should be.
The axis tilted in the night
now you’re the “enemy”.

You gaze at your hated visage
and you scowl at the brazen one
who was simply caught living life,
you were no smoking gun!

You wish that you may find some hope
To tether you to life
To bring you back from bigotry, suffering and strife.

Your muted voice is quiet now
But one day you may try
To make sense of the whole **** mess
Or always wonder why.

There is a love that rages here.
A kind that's incredible.
One that's illogical
and addled.

It sees through eyes though blind.
It thinks with mind though insane.
It feels with heart though unscrupulous.
It chooses with thought though reckless.

It is selfish and it wants what it wants.
It doesn't care because everything else
bears little weight.
Inconsequential.

There is a love that surges here.
And we are but...
collateral damage.

Ribs crack and flowers grow
Life, rising up from death
as easily as day from night

We are all wild flowers
who have no contract
with the word
and who pay no regard

but who whip and whirl
with the wind
staying rooted
yearning for more

Sometimes loosing petals
sometimes blowing away completely
We are our own collateral damage

lost to the universe, lost to the stars