My dreams were fine…unremarkable, which I can

My dreams were fine…unremarkable, which I can live with.

Is it too easy

The foibles of grey men

The weakness of the vain

To say we all deserve it?

I was as guilty as anyone else

Rolling and tumbling as a boy

Fumbling in the shadows after a growth spurt

Refusing to be tied down

Attempting to be an honest man

When the weight of history was against it.

The priest always comes out of a story

With a better press than the actress

Even though the jokes he tells

Fall as flat as a poor man’s purse.

Soldiers die on the whim of presidents

Who practice monologues in private

Every word honed to perfection

Style, content and inflexion

Tailor-made to sound brand new.

Do all who trust in the lord

Learn to die from birth

Did two hundred pilot whales strewn

Along a Tasmanian beach

Breach some sacred code

To share a collective guilt

For which, they all must surely die.

Followers and adherents

Believers seeking truth

Children growing into strangers

Late night revellers

Falling through the cracks

As cat burglars through a roof

The silence of a graveyard

At midnight.

Is the grieving only ever done when the last one falls

And there is no one left to hear it

Did they all get what they deserved

Nothing more, nor less

Is that the way of things

The origin of a thesis

For us

Each and every one?