The slice and shift of jagged lives
All falling on the ground
The chattering solemn hiss of knives
From little sheaths outbound
The bitter broken dreams of wives
Die, writhing, without sound
The trampled hopes of afterlives
Heaped up into a mound

And in an instant’s shattering light
Revealed for all to see
The stumbling march all through the night
From windward to the lee
The tangled twisted truth of right
Of what ‘had oughta be’
The breathless restless soul of might
Which lacks the will to flee

From wriggling whispering gunshot roofs
Same days, same nights, same soul
With dangling distant absent proofs
Race screaming from the goal
Banning mystic danced reproofs
That cannot play the role
While all about them, bulletproof,
Lightning strikes remake them whole.