Why does the sun dry up cascading, perennial tears,



slipping down the coarse cheeks of a million hushed fears,



where all are scalded when the searing fog clears,



while prayers are mutely spoken as the end nears.





We shatter and scrape on delusional knees,



blindly scrounging for mercy as it apathetically flees,



searching listlessly for a salvation frozen in the frigid breeze,



spitting at the soft petals suffocated by a gasping wheeze,





I know now what I need never have known,



of hope that was trampled before it had flown,



into a wasted sky filled with hate that could drown,



the sniggering of the crowd and the sobs of the clown.





A hope so fragile with wings of brittle glass,



ripping away the veneer off the sewers of class,



twisting the fabric of the weighed and huddled mass,



who numbly wait hoping that this too might pass.





For when shards of hope in hearts scurry away,



to a darkened night callous to many a stray,



perhaps then sewn eyes shall behold that doleful day,



when all shall tear at each other while at each other we continue to bray,





Deadened souls may wander the desolate street,



for a lifting of the veil of wilful deceit,



wrapped up in flags, religious snobbery, and a jingoism swollen with conceit,



while humanity’s  limbs splinter in the claws of compassionate defeat,



the drums of war tolling for the ill-fated who chose never to retreat.





From that drenched battle-ground where blood flows through a sieve,



where love’s lost song plaintively begs for a reprieve,



from eternal loss which into raw emotion does cleave,



only to slip through fingers like grains of sand,



and silently leave.