A Hundred Years

By: Gus Victoria

The voices call out to me…

Soft on the hill they call,

Where they bled once

Now grow flowers,

The homes they knew,

Some stand still,

More were rubble long ago,

Their shades are the shadows cast

From that Great War

That ended naught,

The promise of youth

By Empire scythed,

The brotherhood of mankind

By generals silenced,

There was Hope in ‘14,

Only the Reaper

Four long years later.

There was innocence in ‘14,

Only cynicism

One century later.

The world poured in idyllic times

Was tempered at the forge of hell

Before, in blood bathed, it emerged,

Changed,

Unknown,

Broken.

Charred Bush, Silent Rage

By: Gus Victoria

The bush burns

And God speaks.

The madman has a vision

And God speaks.

The preacher needs a raise

And God speaks.

To affect foreign policy

And impose upon nations

The will of “the people”

God speaks.

Yet in pain

In despair

I cry out to God

And…

Silence.

I read the fantasies

Of cultures long buried in sand,

Of the magician carpenter,

Of the imperfect saints

In faith perfected.

None stand as pillars

To the firmament of my belief.

None give solace

When hope takes flight

When God is nowhere,

When faith replaces sight.

I bleed as you pray.

They hunger as you dance.

Your Creation Lord.

Your abandoned problem,

Your neglected children.

We killed you,

But first you let us die.