No Loss?

By Cliff Lake

 

No Loss?

 

Dusting off old lies,

They scream of contrived assault.

An unseen enemy made real by utterance,

No need for substantiation,

Volume solidifies.

A trick writ for the unworthy,

With unstung hand,

And unbent back,

Unskilled in anything save usury.

Lessons from the past go unsung,

Ignorance is more useful,

Exploration is made strange,

A new catechism learned by rote and repeat.

Sour blood untasted,

Flowing only in unreal cinema,

Histories told in plastic,

Or lowly electron,

Easily ignored.

A new Holy War is risen,

The enemy clear,

The outsider is not with us,

And must be overcome.

They march in ragged formation,

Raging over imagined threats undefined,

Except by otherness.

They practice their clumsy thrust,

The unskilled battery,

Dreaming of the day their violence reaps gore.

They believe they long to wade through bodies strewn,

Horror long past their understanding.

They are informed of an enemy,

Be he friend or neighbor,

Or raised alongside them under the same roof.

Were they always thus?

Have they been left alone too long?

Or are they taken by sly evil,

That would waste them for its own purpose.

What salvation can be offered?

Can they be retrieved from the brink?

Or will they plunge into a violence,

They do not yet comprehend.

Will you reach out a hand?

Will you let them lose themselves?

Won’t you lose someone as well?

 

Cliff Lake 10/19/2022

Copyright © Clifford Lake 2022

 

 

 

Location: Dalton, MA, USA

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