the tragedy had no hero: everything happened one night
        no palace, no gardens, no crosstalk
but steel, coal, wool
        monologues in the dark
and three fields

still, it was a tragedy: it had tragic heroes
        you and me, burdened by a fate
not ours, not fair

the story that never changes:
        lies and power, violent guile
richly dressed thieves
        stealing villagers
people with bellies
        the underfed
visions of paradise
        through the hell of others
a revolution of haves
        against the have-nots

they didn't take my land
they gave it to you
they took it from everybody
- - the commons!

she dreamed of trees that night
      branches of bone and glowing webs
flowers of flesh in a slow stir
      irises for leaves and claws as thorns

silver mosquitoes flew in the sky
      foliage trembling as they passed
proboscises with skewered humans
      fresh blood dripping, watering the moors

she ran to hide in cave of glass
      saw pale green skin, petals all around
two eyes rooted in golden wood
      weeping pollen and sap

that day he ran away
        his feet stepped on stones and dirt
grey waters and shattered glass
        but not even for a moment did he stop

he found a faraway ***** to slumber
        the day had yet not broken
but when it did he kept his eyes shut
        refusing for long the sun

once the darkness revived the terror
        he looked up with new desire
he begged the sky, and the sky took him
        with a crisp and gentle gust

I like the version by First Aid Kit, and indeed agree

"he's the universal soldier and he really is to blame"

in the end there is no hiding from this truth

their dead are not our dead, are they?

in the end we did not care enough

our ever-shepherds stained with death the youth

Natalie sings an old song, wondering

"which side are you on"

but not really

Florence Reece didn't wonder either

times do certainly change

a line that deserves a Nobel Peace Prize:

"the Russians love their children too"

oh, Sting, some decades ago they'd hang you for that

we don't want such humanity

it can make conflict hard

would you play this in a camp?

we refuse to believe,
to denounce the dream,
to not remember.

we refuse to accept,
a false defeat,
that the process has ended.

but I look around,
and it appears you've won,
and they all consented.

deafening pluralism
      post-modern [rant]
             victims of culture
spectacle love
      
packaged meanings
      individualist mass
            interconnected points
one-dimensional facts

(i) sit here and meditate on all that
(i) am so terribly meta
(i) love my corral

give all the pleasures (i) can possibly have
teach me to accept anything and never stand up
(i) wanna be a spectator of the things to come

participate the least possible and not care at all
see nothing outside my little microcosm
be a relativist moralist and completely apolitical

please convince (me) too
that we've figured it all
the details remain
but we get the whole

please assimilate me in the pack
(i) wanna be sheepish
(i)'d love to feel numb
(i) love the screen's light, (i) fear the dark

some want to be, (i) just want to have
the self is a process and (i) can't bother with that

(i) now gather tokens to show you my value
bureaucratic meritocracy, let me glorify you

tag me, price me, define me all the way
(i) hope you find a tag for my soul as well

(i) will now be infotained to catch up
will watch a news satirist to understand
after that there's this show of people losing fat
(i) get my "values" from jesters and marketing fads

look, this poem's so meta
(i) could open my heart:
[negative feeling here] [joke about that]
[unoriginal opinion] and [trivia]
[self-resentment], [a very bad pun].