GULAG
You and I are partners We tap on the wall of all souls Extracting hope from threads of bare hands And broken hearts The grim sardonic faces of unloved men Exacted their loss on us Joined in purgatory we wait. Let us speak plainly men of myth making Your fields are wastelands Of crops grown in dark cold minds Your minions built roads of carnage From Carthage to Stalingrad Your crusades will not be undone Leaving bones and wreckage Rudiments of hate. Be still now be quiet We have a story to tell A mocking allegory You will come to grapple with Its mask of indemnity Victims stand before us row upon row Squandering life in demonic servitude A tacky exchange between banal beasts of prey And men with plain brown eyes With the body stripped of dignity And the mind wrenched from pride Reconciling that fate is inextricable The metaphor of our resistance A wall of extinction To whom do we appeal? The hand slaps cold It’s tempest a poison pill under the skin Wrestling with sirens of unrest And faltering images We tangle up in our own spiritual pest Purging religious icons We called home There is a blank face on God We feel its rancorous form In dark corners of the room What is left to postulate? Death nips the onerous day In a field almost barren The beauty of its bleakness Sublime and so impervious Rising cascades of wild fauna Bring redemption of knowing life is A demeanor beyond one’s self We stand will transformed A soliloquy of transgressions Reckoning with reason At this moment you and I know The unequivocal truth That heinous acts of impious men can never restrain The one raw moment of need to tap“What is held captive may never be confined”