where cities are below me

i stand above

atop the high ground

with grandeurs encompassed

in the atmosphere

yet the feeling eludes me

and i cannot tell where the city stops

and where i start

where does humanity lie?

if it is not here,

among citysides

then where can i go

to find a heartbeat

and the people’s devotion?

then i remember,

this is war

where there is no devotion but only

adversary

no sound but the deafening howl of a dying summer’s wind

set behind a dry cyber sky:

for here lies the body

of the infamous man –

killed at his own hand and laid flat
on a plateau-

here lies the myth of a city

where fantasy is submerged in unrest

with the margins of chasm

where nothing is found

but the same questions and broken answers

bringing me back around

to the man,

who lies here in a cataclysm

beyond death,

holding every name,

first and last and

upon hearing the pall bearer’s footsteps

and the recitation

i remember that this too shall

pass.

it only comes down to the man:

who never wins against

the grain,

but erodes away,

becoming dust

gathered upon the mesa with no city found below it.