The faces are foreign
As with rubber masks
Caricatures, grotesque
Not wholely unknown
But seemingly apart
Blank, vacant, stares
Each visage bringing
Only further numbness
Their mouths, agape
Their eyes, hollow
Their hands, pale and cold
Ever reaching
Ever grasping
Ever clawing
Ever filled, but never satiated
Lost souls
Infected by desperation and woe
Wreaking of wretchedness and misery
I am, at once, repulsed
Yet…
Compelled to assist
Could I ease their suffering?
As such, a boon is offered
And then… accepted
Met not with gratefulness
But rather, the unfortunate and horrific subtext
Of ravenous and unsettling eagerness
Yet, compassion undeterred
By glorious purpose or barbaric sincerity
As doubts start to fester
When will it be enough?
Even as needs are met
Spiders of fingers, grasp
Refusing withdrawal
Angering as they’re lingering
Bitter pills, this shame
Choked down painfully, willfully
Leaving jagged scars of contempt, resentment
And as such,
In nightmarish turn
What began as giving
Goes over to taking,
Each hand filled
Each service rendered
Met only with further ask
More
Their wordless cry
More and more
Driven by callous, insatiable greed
Building to full and frenetic crescendo
Cold-eyed sharks, starting to frenzy
Scenting blood in the water
Winter dances down my spine
Sobering, the realization comes
This can only end one way
There will be no victory here
There’s no hope that will be given
There’s no hope that can be found
Just a bottomless cauldron
Of wanton, endless, need
Insight, admittedly, arriven
Perhaps a moment too late
For they begin to pull
Down
That they may climb
Rats on a sinking ship
Amorphic and anonymous
Twisting and seething
A garish collective of chaos
Furthering its own fury
Gasping and grasping
The shock, overcome
I reach out for stable footing
An action, I determine doomed immediately
Impotent in the face of such unpliable fanaticism
Fatefully swallowed by it’s tremendous wake
Revealing only the unsettling ease,
With which empathy abandons the hearts of men
Impulse conquers thought
Claws tear flesh
Teeth render bone
A taste of tears and blood
That I know to be my own
And suddenly, they’ve gone
I’m falling all alone
Down and down
Into a stark nothingness
Hope lingers, flickers and fades
Marshalling what purpose remains
I reach out for help
For salvation
For forgiveness
But there’s no answer
No one is coming
I gaze out into the silence
But the only thing left to see
Is the darkness ahead
And above
And behind