Deathright: A Collection

1. Accidents of Birth

We are born this way,
born hungry and
screaming, little fists
balled against the
harshness of the
light, born angry
with this birthright
of self awareness.

We were born this way,
splintered sprits against
the remnant of a world
too fragile for our grasping,
too frail for our tantrums,
too finite for our infinite
needs and neurotic
aspirations, and the
question of our own nature,
so awful and omnipresent,
is only important because
we are not happy to
wonder, but must know
and prove and be masters
of fact, and if we are
animals awakened, risen
a half step from the quiet
purpose of the others,
shown the power of
greed and hatred and
unreasoning destruction,
so let it be, and if we are
larval gods on our way
to our dark and eternal
glory, destroyers of worlds,
become death upon the
face of the gleaming day,
so let it be.

We were born this way,
and thus shall we live,
and so, too, shall we die,
passing from this world
screaming, unready,
still full of anger and
pain, and though we
have tried to fix ourselves,
we have only painted
over the rough surface,
only added momentary
sweetness to a roiling
and bitter sea.

We were born this way.

2. Tuneless Elegy of the Prosaic Faithful

One more,
one more,
one more,
and we will learn the lie
just as we’ve seen,
the sky is any color
and we can bring
these choices down
with us unto the blue
so you, one more who
learns to lie, and little
learning is involved
for it comes to us as
a thing forgotten,
these small betrayals,
and we misbegotten
sons and daughters
slouch ever onward,
the image of our
fathers, singing
tuneless anthems to
the dusk, we, grim
songbirds of the
dimness and the
oncoming hour of
twilight.

3. The Joy of Industry

We have been busy building,
oh, yes,
oh, yes, ye faithful funeral
marchers, ye pious drinkers
at the bar, ye quick handed
gunmen at the bank’s
quick check out counter, ye
smiling degenerates lingering
at the chain link fence
beside the school ground.

We have been busy building,
oh, yes,
oh, yes, believers.

We have been busy building,
and before ever there can
be a stone balanced upon
another, there has to be
the breaking, the mining,
the burning, the felling,
the leveling, the making,
the forging, the milling,
and we do like those things,
like them so well that we
must tear down and
build up the things that
are not broken, we must
place strategic flaws in
what we create, so we
will again have the
joy of the destruction,
because the only thing
better than watching
a tree fall, the only thing
better than seeing a
fine mountain crushed
slowly into chalk and
powder, is to see our
great houses, every
summation of our
labors laid to waste,
to see buildings
turn to ash and fall
to earth, so that we
may start again,
so that we may,
ever more, be
busy, building.

4. The Compassionate Monolith of Socio-Political Expediency

Blindness is a virtue we encourage
here on the ailing mother ship,
and it may be argued that blindness
is the highest among the many forms
of blessed calm, for what of all
ailments cannot be well countered
with sweet darkness, with the turning
ever inward of the eye?

Blindness is a virtue we encourage
in the great multitude, for the blind
are never troubled by the loss of
the light in the morning east, they
are not concerned with the barren
stretch of abandoned railway line,
they are fine enough to sit inside
and accept the crawling decrepitude
around them, as obedient citizens
should always do.

Unreason is a fine tonic, and also
apathy, and foolish preoccupation
with groaningly mundane commonplaces,
and especially an unwillingness to
learn, for learning is the way to
madness, sure as any statement
has ever been true, and we don’t
wish to find the way to madness,
but to make it, and to have the
multitudes walk it in calm
silence, ever slouching closer to
pure slavery, the world dying
a twitching, frothing death
at their feet, paralyzed with
concern for trivialities, loaded
like mules and moving in
the direction of the flashing
street sign.

5. A Litany of Our Good Deeds

“But we have done much,
brought light to the darkness,
done good, done the work
of whichever deity we chose
to follow.”

…and how can that point be
argued?

Light to the darkness,
we have brought this much,
for we are well capable of
making fire, and enjoy the
kindling of it, and the
wonderful hunger of it,
and the way it changes
things from what they
are into something more
consistent, something
more uniform, something
smaller and softer and
blacker than before.

Good, we have done so
much good, for the doing
of good must needs end
only when there are no
more to stand in our way,
no more to raise a dissenting
voice, no more to serve as
heretics to our cause, and
that day, may it come and
be peaceful and fine, is
a long age away, and there
are plenty still who would
gainsay us as to the nature
of God and Man, many who
say words we cannot understand,
and those people must be
convinced of the error in their
ways, must be transformed
to be like us.

There is so much light to yet
bring to so many dark places,
so that there is never any night
again in all the world, and we
have the proper candles hidden
in the ground, had we only the
will to use them.

There is still so much good to
be done, so many confused
souls to save, so many enemies
to contend with, so many lies
to erase and replace with our
own great wisdom, and let
God be merciful and just
enough to let us have all the
power we need to accomplish
such ends and accomplish
the mission of purifying the
ages and erasing them, so
that there is a new Eden, or
there is nothing, and even
if we few, we warriors of
the holy struggle, are the
only remnant of a decaying
culture to see it through,
let that be, and let our
good deeds be done through
the blood of the faithful and
the infidel alike.

6. God’s Blood Requiem

They say everything will change,
that we have changed it,
created consequences,
created systems of call and
response beyond our own
ability to gauge, laid the
groundwork for the massive
engine of the future with our
incremental actions, with
our building, with our
insatiable urge for industry,
with our unconquerable
desire for the new, the
improved, the advanced
formula with new stain-fighting
agents and a fresh, clean scent.

They say that we are dead,
yet walking and ignorant
of the putrid stench rising
from our rotting husks,
that there are armies of us,
locust-like plagues of us,
all busy dying, all doomed,
all engaged in the process
of being judged unworthy
by the planet and summarily
put to death.

They say that there is still
time, maybe, to reverse the
damage we’ve done, to
repent our sins against
the planet, but repenting
doesn’t come easily to us,
our necks stiff and our
faces red with anger at
the thought that we could
be wrong, that we have
wasted the best of all
possible worlds, that
there is ever and end
to the good fortune
and wealth, that we
ever have to own up to
being the ignorant
giants in the playground,
inelegantly smashing
anything that doesn’t
suit our purpose at that
exact instant.

They say that the only
saving grace is that we
will get our reward in
heaven, but what evidence
do we have of heaven,
what traveler’s story of
the far, good lands beyond
can we look at with critical
eyes and take as truth?

We know only this, as the
end of things slides further
toward screaming oblivion—
there will be no one left
when we go to compose
our requiem, no God’s blood
to salve the scarred world
and erase the scars of our
death throes, but only
silence, and the hope
that some hardy creatures
can rise in our stead and
find the serenity we were
never able to grasp when
they assume the mantle
of the new kings of this
tiny blue marble upon
the infinite dark.