love letter #3

Complex

We shelved ourselves with lowered heads

into the gray panopticon.

Could this labor really be the future

our ancestors won?

Culture, climate tropical,

With scars left from the western wars;

Rotten roots and topical

Treatment for our festering sores

Relentless, this velocity;

Cruel solar luminosity

Beat upon us with ferocity. 

But in the wake of such atrocity

The sky above the prison-walls was wider than I'd ever seen—

Spilling off the canvas in bold strokes of aquamarine.

But then the scene:

Denouement quickly shattered in the morning heat, 

Vultures cursed to never eat; 

These walls held only living meat.