Herd In Demise

 
I

In final realms we carry on
and in so going hear a song,
undefeated in a slow refrain,
unretreating with none to blame.

Darting eyes still seek relief
behind a guise where few retreat;
onward stagger heavy feet
if I am to lie this won't repeat.

Health betrays revealing bones,
a framework once so stealthily grown:
I am not what I appear,
under this mask I still know fear.

 II

Pressing on we know not pause,
to hell have gone our former laws
the throes of which are faltering
as we go forth unhaltering.

Following our lead to slip away
the dreams we had of come what may
were once so vague yet all too real
does this become with heavy zeal.

We see ahead the downward slope
that beckons our fears to interlope
into ravines from which emerged
things we'd all but failed to purge.

III

Down a narrow forgotten pass
the lot carry on en masse
unto somewhere a place unknown
once a city town called home.

Heavily pennance takes its toll
upon the facades that we extolled
rendering our concepts spare
and widening our circles there.

Deep within it eats away
that which consumes the minds array,
hiding itself covertly still
as chaos ensues resistance builds.

IV

Who will come and in what way
and unbenounced may us betray
though solidly we hope to ensnare
what we can keep still in our care.

Ever armed with what we know
reaching across what shakes below,
as crumbling earth descends away
every hillside feels the sway.

Under bleak forebodeing skies,
our fates now stripped away from lies;
candor shows what truth is formed
and off from center goes our norm.

V

As some new era breaches forth
only to deviate from its north,
we sew our cloaks from salvage threads
and covers ripped from off our beds.

Lest we can still protect the weak,
the means of to which we dare not speak,
if only they could hear us now
and in their silence us avow.

Unaware of any ill effects
try we dare to self correct
and in so doing see emerge
a primal state where all converge.


VI

Locked in stasis minds deformed,
gone to pieces in many a storm,
written down some unseen trace,
shouted at by an unheard voice.

Legacies that leave a mark
the indentations red and stark
on the skin of our hearts array
leaving our strife on full display.

Catering to our undue rein
unhampered by unwanted gain,
what is lost is lucid shame;
the tempest fires up its flame.

VIII

As onward surge the grisly reams
we confess to inward schemes:
Save thyself and from this glean
the skin of some importunate fiend.

I remember my neighbors well
yet now they seem to be a shell
lacking in sense the will to fight
for their former conscientious plight.

So we all go down in tow
recouping fewer seeds to sow
than in harvest bounties past,
for what will we recieve at last?

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