Riot Call

It's such a tragic statistic
when the last thing on earth
that approaches your face
is a patch of brown grass,
pale and dry from age,
dead from poor nourishment,
just like your need for acceptance.

And it’s even more destructive
when the scarlet blood
hanging onto the tip
was pulled from your bone marrow,
all the way through your thick, coarse skin,
by the dense and moldy wooden plank,
swung in the hands of the town’s valiant savior.

Yes, there are rapists and fascists
living in each corner of the street,
pillaging their families of their dignity,
ejaculating on the very words they glorify,
but the filthy path in which you tread
might as well be a bull’s eye on your forehead.

The tides of holy water did not burn an inch,
did not smother your facet of human nature,
did not blindly agree with our fright-ridden hatred,
so the only and easy way out
is to induct you into our slaughterhouse,
all because you loved.

Can love be executed so poorly
that it awaits a death penalty?
In a Utopian ideal, anything can die.

And they wonder,
with our dying breath,
and the dirt being shoved
against our battered faces,
why we declare a riot call.