I watched the city burn; A growing pile of embers that glowed with the hatred of its oppressors
I watched you learn of the past that haunts its streets without the freedom of professors
Slowly we turned to gas lit lights, unstable in the wind
The squall of quarrels leaving their flimsy glass unable to defend
We made the best of the ash, drawing figures on our skin
Unable to comprehend that our beautiful town had fallen in the end
We wandered the alleyways looking for our good time but lost our dignity without the map to detail it for us
We thought we outdid the woods but we simply rescaled the forest

The impiety stamped on our foreheads. we gathered supplies of brick and stone to lay a foundation of cracked findings.
But the mortar that held us together was more than binding. It was blinding and winding through our minds and left us simply sighing inside them.
We collected our thoughts, door to door, memory to memory
A mummery of man’s masochistic need for mammary induced motives.
We held our council in the tower of pretenses, without defenses.
Confessing disdain for pretexts that came before our weak pleasures
We lit a fire to signal others to our extended reach, but over stepped the line
Time and time we doubled our lives, only to reclaim the smoke of a dimly lit shine

We focused on the world, not the lens from which we crept on a world that felt inferior
It focused that light on the shadows of our city that fear deterred
we built cathedrals to our images
and built the same stained glasses windows we picketed
slowly our hard work was reduced to a pile of the earth it was built on
we sung of our city with a felt song, never thinking it felt wrong
when the son burnt us back our dry wit lit like kindling doused in gasoline
will our city grow back through the folly of man’s ambitions or is it just a lasting dream?