Beneath the streets of our civilization lie the burnt and mangled corpses of men. Centuries of rotten carcasses piled beneath our feet, upon whose skulls we trample and whose broken ribs forever carry the brute weight of our desired rampage towards the sunset.

In the midst of our rivers and our sewers flow the blood of men, coursing through our quick-and-easy lives as the pulse beats in our chests and juggle in our jugulars, cut deeply into our shared destiny and yet snap-chatted into complete and utter oblivion.

The smell of sweat mingled with the smell of molten metal; volcanic eruptions of steel-farms-and-mills tingling the spine of our calculated wreckage of the scenery—apocalyptic graveyards grey and industrial in streets naked and unafraid, unashamed.

Rising like the heaving chest of an asthmatic; black oozing smoke from coal-fires or explosions in mines underneath the feet of our history analysed by puritans in wretched excess—now forgotten, now pushed away as damage done to nature more than men.

Or perplexingly perceived to be damage done by men upon the face of earth; scars cut into her beating heart by the uncaring hands and terrorist actions of men wielding knives sharpened to pick-axe-points to dominate and destroy, to exterminate and terminate.

Drawn as damage done by pure malice, by ideological disinterest in the ecosystem and its careful symbiosis with the floral fauns of ages past; prophetic visions not of mechanical necessity but of the three X’s – Explore, Expand, Exterminate, building not on hope but upon hate.

And all the corpses maligned and magnified that line our streets and pampered pockets died in vain and—in some strangers eye—a pragmatic parasite to be displayed as archaic tools of oppression for doing what they had to do, not what they wanted to do…

…and all the blood pumped to and fro our synthetic urban symbiosis, picturing the city as an organism, heart pounding, carrying vessels to and fro to do the work and duty that need be done; heroes hidden in the everyday soot and grime of displaced malcontent…

…and all the dead and all the dying whose hearts and souls were lost in permanent war, worn down and torn asunder by outside forces in chivalrous regalia marching to defend and to protect their very own ifs and buts and homes and hopes and dreams…

…all our eyes turned away from the crucified and martyred millions who died and are still dying for ideals and for ideas which they did not understand or maybe even share, but whose heartbeats beat for all and one all at once; who was called to sacrifice for some wicked strangers dream…

…all our eyes turned away from the loss of innocence and loss of life and glimmer in the eyes of those who fell in line and fell into entrapment permanent within the grey brick walls of soul-sucking industry for their lives and the lives of their family in near-yet-forgotten history…

…all our eyes turned away from soul-crushing sacrifice done by men whose wish and will were for others to be better off in the future than he; whose calloused hands and blackened lungs illuminated by the fires and spasms of industry paved the road upon which we walk carelessly…

…for all who fell into the flames of indentured servitude, who made their mark upon the world and who were forgotten and unsung – we turn our eyes away and shake our heads in dutiful neglect to forget and sing a different song to different tunes…

…for all whose arms and legs and backs were beat and broken in picket lines naught but a century ago, who cut the dried umbilical cord of industrial infancy to raise the standards indefinite are now cut and dried in the scorching sun of vain and vacuous whining…

…for all whose tedious toil in the grubby mud and soil whose song should be sung and celebrated are left to die in the annals of history as burdensome and oppressive tyrants; patriarchs of unchecked privilege existing at the cost of the suffering of others…

…others whose toil and blood and meagre existence were hampered not by him but by the society in which they co-existed in dire circumstance and need, burnt by the scorching rain of dehumanized elitism in serfdom mimicked and mirrored in the days as the days were then…

…we sing of him and they and them as de facto Machiavellian tyrants, wielding uncensored power with machinelike efficiency, heaping scorn and ridicule upon the memory of past-time struggles where times were hard for all and one, not merely for her…

…we sing of him and they and them as all their struggles are all but forgotten in the moonlit glow of easy times birthed by his struggles and careless self-sacrifice done in the daring glow of the hope that is the new daze of new days dawning in the unforeseeable future…

…we sing of him and they and them as simplified black/white explorations of history viewed through binocular lenses cracked and covered in soot by a generation – give or take – of easy living relative to the past whose presence we have dutifully decided to forget and revise…

…we sing of him and they and them as were he and they and them enemies of the women and children for whom blood were spilt for the sake of them and of future generations; for whom backs were bent and bones were broken on the road to better living…

…we sing of him and they and them as if they matter none in the building of our easy day-daze societies, where we now find ourselves lost dancing in the silver light spat upon us by the moon under whose streaks of silver we have fallen into thankless, dubious, immediate lives…

…we sing of him and they and them as relics of some former era of male supremacy under whose boot and heels all who were not men were crushed and smothered into relentless compliance with his governing will and steel-tipped iron glove of rape…

…we sing of this and of that, remembering little and knowing even less, permanently googling the eye of the beholder as though the eye of the beholder matter more than the beholden who wore the rags of deep despair and desperate danger to save others at the cost of himself…

…we sing of this and mumble about that, understanding little, and caring even less, about the men upon whose shoulders we grandstand to amplify our virtue by caring about everyone but him and his life, his sacrifice and premature industrial accident or war-planned death…

…we sing of this and celebrate that and forget – in our relative ease of living, in our somewhat simple lives – the many centuries of dead and broken men below our feet where we walk with ease, carrying Instagram-models in our pockets and thinking no further than our memes…

…we celebrate this and sing of that, as all our shared struggles and all our historical nuance and difficulty and nuanced difficulty is flaccidly flashed into unblinking social-media existence dragging on into our self determined societal suicidal samba…

…we forget this, as we shame that which we should remember with reverence and respect; our water still poured from sinks by the blood of men, our pocket computers built upon the rotting corpse-hands of those men who died for our lives, whose lives and memories we now shame.

Beneath the streets of our civilization lie the burnt and mangled corpses of men. Centuries of rotten carcasses piled beneath our feet, upon whose skulls we trample and whose broken ribs forever carry the brute weight of our desired rampage towards the sunset.

 

Moiret’s Book – Howling at a Slutwalk Moon:

Vol 1 Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/107571074X
Vol 1 Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TZTPDPR
Vol 2 Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1075714184
Vol 2 Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TZR25NL
Vol 1 Illustrated Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1075717094
Vol 2 Illustrated Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1075723078