TODAY WE LIVE

Today we live.
Tomorrow?

This is not living;
This is the interim between
The past and the future,
The no-man's land of life.

Today is lies,
Pretence
And guile,
Suppression of the weak;
The strong rule.

Beauty is shackled
And imprisoned.
Pornography is the theme.

The world is ravaged
By ravaged minds.
The flesh is eaten raw
By crawling, swarming
Maggots of the brain.

Maggoty rules supreme.

Beneath the muck
The dead piled high,
The cannon's
Thund'rous roar,
The trampled truth
Shrieks forth a cry,
Unheard--
Charged from the fore.

Death's hypnotic eye
Steals over the earth
Winking its crimson glare.
Soaked in the blood of youth,
Its insidious hand
Slinks into every heart
With fingers,
Stealthy tentacles,
Squeezing out the life-blood
Like red wine
Crushed from luscious grapes.

From this distant star
Behold our sanguinary planet,
This grain of sand--bloodstone
Whirling in its ordained orbit.

See how it drips
With the fluid of life
In fluvial abandon.

See the fuliginous air
Black with the smoke of battle,
This boiling cauldron,
This hellish furnace
Belching its hideous soot
Created of human flesh.
How many more shall die
In this crucible of death?

Murder is made glorious;
This devil's kettle filled
With the seething blood
Of pawns of the strong
Swept into the swirling
Gore--helpless to resist.

Many of them knew
Beauty and truth;
They cannot die untainted;
Their blood churned
With the unclean
Seethes in this cursed foyer

Wake! You fools;
See the inevitable doom
Which awaits you.
Look to the vivid past--
There your answer lies
If you will but see it.

Will you sleep again
When this war is done?

© 1997 by Pasqual S. Schievella