Humanity Lost

by Simon Austin

Tuesday 24th September 2013 11:31 am (first posted Thursday 21st March 2013 9:59 pm)

I freeze,
And fall to my knees.
The earth is cold tonight, my sight
Is sorrowed as I place my hands on its frozen surface,
No furnace to warm me, but bereft.
Here, on the borrowed hour
Of my death.

The frost seeping through my clothes
Chills my bones, I am lost here, alone.
The precipice in front of me is wide, and deep,
But full. I keep my head dipped,
Knowing they watch me
And mock me.
A pathetic excuse for man
I am; a parasite they long to vanish,
To banish and go from these lands that were free
Not so long ago….

 

How did I end up here?  Such fear.

What evil have I wielded in this life

Or the last

That justifies my final moment?

I have seen the past and the present, but no future,

No more will I stand as I grasp at my knees

On the floor, in the dirt that consumes me

And is ready to lose me to the worms

In the bullets and blood,

Left to die and to rot

In the mud.

 

Soon now, near obsolete,

A front row seat

To my own annihilation.

Devastation, wiped clean, buried.

When I, the very last in 'sin'

Of twenty-eight thousand lost,
Falls in.

 

I sink further into the soil.

Turmoil.  Lingerer.

The harbinger of death

Extends my suffering,

Shuffling behind.

For the sheer joy to witness my distress,

They aggress.

I hear the serpent tongues licking the air,

Tasting my fear;

Rejoicing.

I peer once more into my open tomb.

To fall soon, I see my place

Between the face of the old and the young,

The father, the son,

The well and the weak,

The proud and the meek,

Innocent, all, now done.

 

I feel god smile,

Thanking me for my presence

But turning away, shielding his eyes.

Even he denies that man can wield such brutality,

For my finality, even the heavens

Cannot stand.

It is said that only the dead will see
The end of war - a small salvation,
In the face of a nation destroyed
By the passing of law.

It seems though I will live long enough to witness

The perdition of sanity

And the destruction of hope,

At the end of humanity,
Here, on the very horizon of my life.

 

I hear the click of the barrel,

His apparel rustles at the effort.

The cold steel, real now,

Presses against my temple,

And chills my soul.

My skull, braced.

I close my eyes

And whisper ‘please’

But useless these words are,

In such hatred, such darkness,
As everything,
Suddenly and permanently passes,
Into nothing.