Electing Death

Dark, the clouds fill up the sky –
Thunder rolls, we can’t deny . . .
The valley fills with deathly pale
Horses who don’t neigh, but wail.

Death is leading dissonance,
Overwhelming common sense –
He promises to end all change,
Changing Hope to something strange.

Townsmen come out of their homes.
Lightning crackled in dark ohms
From sword to sword the fiends held high,
Making great men faint and sigh.

Saviors! All the men declared.
Hugging horse necks, they each bared
Their wives and children to the fiend
Grinning at what he’d convened.

First he took their daughters and
Then he took away their land –
He promised to replace it all
And protect them with a wall.

Disappearing with the girls,
All their gold and all their pearls,
He left them paper promises
They’d be gods and goddesses.

Hope arrived, but all the town
Drove her to the river, drown
Her in the current as they said,
You’re a fraud, Death brought us bread.

Growth arrived, but every man
Bound and burned him; then the clan
Rejoiced that Change would come no more:
He’s the one they most abhor.

Death returned upon his horse,
Pleased the town chose his new course,
And built the town their walls with bones,
Leather rather than with stones.

All the men rejoiced to see
Mother Death come set them free
From every worry, every fear,
Sure prosperity’d appear.

Death was dressed in ragged drag,
Death’s perfume soon made them gag,
But he assured them they would soon
Love the terms of his commune.

Years went by and children born,
Half the boys, though, were forlorn
At seeing half the girls they’d need
If each boy would live to breed.

Tensions broke out in the streets,
Demonstrating all the feats
Of strength the men could bring to bear,
Genes lashed out in true despair.

Death returned to find the blood
Certifiably a flood –
It flowed up to his horse’s bridle –
He had truly not been idle.

Laughing, Death enjoyed the scene –
Ravishing the golden mean,
The men who lived locked up their doors,
Turned the women into whores.

One old widow looked at Death,
Did not cringe or take a breath,
Then pointed at the demon’s skull,
Fading it to a pale hull.

You! I know what you have done.
Leather, bones, my daughter’s one
You used to build this wall around
We who you once cruelly bound.

Years ago I recognized
Birthmarks on the leather prized
Off of my daughter’s living flesh
Her bones make up this wall’s white mesh.

What did you bring in return?
What did we do so we would earn
A generation who’d destroy
Life and hope and love and joy?

Death just laughed at her and said,
All your lusts are in your bed,
I just provided your desires,
Doused the greatest of your fires.

What I promised was a wall,
What I promised was a shawl
To keep you safe from all of life –
I’m to blame for all this strife?

Death is what you asked of me –
War and Pestilence make three –
And you had best expect that we’ll
Rule with constant, crushing zeal.

Change and Growth – the gods of Light –
You destroyed them with delight –
Was Death an unexpected guest?
You sucked strongly from my breast.

You rejected truth to free
Man from true reality –
But order comes from constant change –
Living things all rearrange.

You chose Death, so don’t complain
My clouds never bring you rain,
And thunder’s really horses’ hooves
Stomping all ‘til nothing moves.

War was here, now Pestilence
Will expose your arrogance
By driving every person mad –
Syphilis in dad and cad.

Welcome to the world you made.
Death then turned and pulled his blade
And showing rare-shown sympathy
Killed her so she would not see.

Death then gathered up each fiend –
Every sword was sharp and cleaned –
Then War and Pestilence arrived.
No one in the town survived.