The People Sea

Come and see, come and see,
come and see, the people trees,
made of twisted hands and broken bones,
of smashed harms, twisted in their homes.
A forest that grew in a single day,
when the earth like water did shake and sway,
and rippled like waves upon some other sand,
where typhoon swallowed a forsaken land.

These were those on the edge of life,
the light burning of the energy age.
Killed by the strife,
the war that takes place every day,
locked in glowing buttons far away.
The dead now can give many thanks,
that when trouble came, we saved the banks.

Come and see, come and see,
the torrent of rotting people trees,
legs turned and tangled in a human knot,
left to the carrion, and coming rot.
All around the taste of hell,
that seeping seething people smell.

Come and look, come and listen,
as the drying blood browns, and dew does glisten,
as another sun dawns ripe and red,
to shower the shards of the half buried dead.
Chunks of faces, and bits of eyes,
where once stood a tofu built high rise.

Come and hearing, come and feel,
the heart ripped mother's squeals,
pouring out their life with cries,
as their children slipped out from their lives,
and all the promises made of a new state,
turn to ashes, for there flesh has gone to its face,
their daughter found hear and there in bits,
their sons scattered pieces molder,
where the concrete pyre sits.
How many lost, how many found,
how many mashed into the ground?

We will never truly know,
even now the weeds start to grow.

In Myanmar and Chengdu,
we have only a touch of what they go through.
But before we offer safe derision,
have we not made the same decision?
That some people are as precious as gem or hidden gold?
Others are mere mechanical meat, bought and sold,
to be smashed to mist on some random day,
when the typhoon comes,
or the earthquake tides do play?
Against such visions as slam into our faces,
hurled from the victims of distant places,
mere words from me or others glance,
against the consuming rise, they had no chance.
Fed into the soul machine,
for a scrap of profit some suited man will glean.
Sell the rice for bullets and baubles,
baubles and bullets,
stand and stare,
and the billets and burials.

For them, now, there is nothing left.

Come and be, come and be,
part of the dying people sea.
The foam of flesh, that was once life,
as solid walls became shearing knife,
as hoses and hovels where they huddled,
turned from grass and tied bamboo,
into vegetables of human stew.

Come hither, life withers!
To be replaced,
by the carnage of our world disgraced,
and New Orleans gathers two sister cities,
into the silent embrace,
her ghostly visage looks, and turns to us,
as she leads them, draped in white,
towards the twilight of history's night.

How many dead, how many gone?
More will join them, before ere long.
The money changers know it's for the best,
to let the people wave rise and crest.
So ignore the screaming and their woes,
it's merely how this age comes and goes,
you've got to get up, and get dressed.
And push the little keys and dials,
which are the death god's toothy smile,
he stares at you from that humming rack,
he owns your soul, he'll take it back.
One day your number will be spat out,
no use to worry, or to shout,
it's just a number, what it's all about.
On that day your life will be snuffed out.

Bits of you will ebb and flood,
greased by someone else's blood,
and churned to slurry.
Which though by broken furry ground,
was decided atop another,
half forgotten funeral mound.

Business as usual, that was once said,
atop the bodies of our hallowed dead.
It won't be until history is some day read,
that others will measure the cubic miles bled.
The seething churning people sea,
of all the dead given so profit could have its poverty.