Forlorn Hope

With held, stale breath,
we assault the towers
of evening,

Keeping these grim
hopes hard in our
hearts like cracked
stone of the mountain,

Keeping the faith
that has lately fallen
and gone down into
the unforgiving
dusk,

This marble upon
the blank face of the
outer void—

A lost and arcane
implement
carried unknowing
in the grimy pocket
of this forgetful
and aging super-being,

These folk--

Small creatures of
no great import on
a small-scale world
recycled through
the hands of a thousand
generations of careless
dictators,

With prosaic implications
and dim cognition driving
us slow upon the road
to nowhere…

But we are not yet
doomed, not yet lost
on the winding path
and dusty loom of
the ages,

And with our
nonsensical claims
of godhood ringing
falsely in our ears
we are yet a force
of mind unweakened
by reason, unleavened
by the sense of
hopeless wanting and
slain fate,

These dying warriors
of evening, going
upward into black
with war flags held
high and stale, spent
breath upon our lips,
blood crawling at
the back of our throat,
perhaps more willing
than able, but nonetheless
a screaming hurricane
of untidy emotion upon
the stygian, barren surface
of the benighted sky.