The Quiet Rushing

Stood still in long funeral lines as fighting broke out somewhere up ahead of us

Vowed to pretty women, all in white, who scattered yellow flowers out upon us

Saw men too strong to think, die violently justifying the mistakes of others

Heard frightened foods cry out as the smell of death filled their nostrils

Became tangled up in confusion after falling over the most obvious of riddles

Saw smoke rising in threat beyond their peaceful white steeples

Heard the quiet rushing back in, once I had finished all my shouting

Felt the life draining out of me, when we left you with nothing

Stood listening to the village bells filled with their simple reasons

Got sucked under dirty water and spit out from gray tailpipes

Lost all the real reasons but still kept right on working

Might have heard the silence dripping during long and sleepless nights

Watched the vultures grow fat as the songbirds slowly lost their feathers

Walked where they had always driven and finally realized how far

Escaped or was released up high into our blue, blue atmosphere

Left blank applications at the locked compound gates of invisible leaders

Roared through concrete canyons ignoring other’s children

Saw endlessly cheerful ads going on blankly without me

Made up my mind to just be happy and to keep to my meds

Was touched by their great suffering even behind my moving windshield

Heard a quiet sobbing I could not stop to recall for many hours

Saw hopeless widows watching their many children playing

Got struck hard inside as we shoveled thru your charred belongings

Grew older and slower but was in no way deemed to be the wiser

Stood up to be counted and was downsized, outsourced, laid off and forgotten

Limped off, looking for that quiet place I had heard of in their advertising

Ignored all that disturbed me for just as long as I could

Watched the fat and inactive be carried off slowly, somewhere far away

Saw meadows going brown and the trees drying out into waste paper

Wondered why the snow had stopped falling and it all gotten so expensive

Was bullied into illiteracy and a disdain for the magic of maths

Watched the wolves make a comeback until we showed them once again

Found my palms were still damp even as I sat trying to be calm

Cursed out my fictional savior for what I knew were my own mistakes

Hung up my clothes neatly even though they were worn out and filthy

Enjoyed the dying images produced when at last my breathing stopped