We walked out from the places we were born,
and spit on our hands
to hoist the iron,
to move the earth,
to hew the wood,
to crush the rock,
and build this place
from a wasteland
into a paradise.
We had left our homes,
the places where we were raised,
by fist,
and blood,
and booze,
and fucking abuse,
to carve out this kingdom
a thousand miles away
from our birthplaces.
We created it
in the image of our ambitions.
We sowed the fields
with the seeds of our inspiration
and we drew water
from the river of time
to slake our thirst
as if it would never run dry.
We were wrong.
We were so wrong.
The things we ran away from,
clung to us like leeches,
and dug into our minds and skin,
and were fattened by the bounty
that we had raised.
Out lofty ambitions,
crept into our minds,
and soon corrupted us
in skin,
and bone,
and flesh,
until we had become worse
than the monsters we had fled.
Those of us that live still,
remember watching the palaces burn.
We hear the screaming of our people
and see the wasteland
that we made
in our own image.
We thought we were gods;
we were barely men.
we were,
in fact,
the architects
of our own holocaust.
-HG