Kill The Lights

 

Kill the romance,

in the cold of night

when the fog sets in,

low

over the ground.

Bury our sin.

Conceal our irrelevance.

The ones the world creates

only to discard.

 

Kill suburbia.

Life in chloroform.

Impotent, sedated

and compromised.

Never lift a finger,

but to point it at the screen

and say,

“If it were up to me,

things would be different.”

So much for liberty.

 

Kill the counter-culture.

Usurped and derided.

No more curated a look

than the one

stolen from the dead.

The heartbreak

is criminal,

when they learn

they’ve been taught

to rebel

along party lines

and corporate affiliations.

 

Kill the apologist.

Nuke this version

and everyone’s accounts,

so we all start over.

Most of you

were never sorry, anyway,

you just didn’t want

to be singled out

for your crimes.

All our crimes

are the same;

there are no innocents here.

 

Kill the artists.

We gave up all our visions

long ago.

We came in from the outside,

because we didn’t want to be cold

and suffer

to find

the meaning in our souls.

We’d rather pass off

photocopies

of pop culture mascots

as our masterpieces.

So afraid of the travails

of creation.

 

Kill the lights.

 

 

HG – 2022