We are the dead.
And not cadaverous corpses that
Erode essence like a caustic, purple river surging through marrow.
We are the victims.
Voices that can’t speak, for we have tape upon our barren lips, and our effort is drowned by the sound of gold battling humanity - phantoms that can’t roam or moan, brute chains binding an idea.
We are the eyes that see, but what is sight without pure fight?

We are the dead.
And we were told we breathe again tonight.
Tonight we plummet, one by one, as a meteor shower. The sun’s last golden rays into a world with no flowers – not counting those laid upon our tomb as an assuage to nature’s betrayal of love and life
We created hell.
Hell was coined by heaven looking down and seeing

A frail man with one leg, no home or warm meal, laying on the street half-naked
Naked wounds of veterans depicting dignity ripped apart by gold and violet, having their patriotic passions of red, white and blue turn gray.
And the gray bathroom tiles are frigid and wet
Wet by the tears of a bullied boy – a veil towards the floor like the veil of ignorance behind him – all because he didn’t have nice shoes.
The children who have no shoes to walk with, mother to embrace, food to eat, or happiness to prosper.
The happiness developed by mere currency
And currency worth more than a human being.

We are the dead,
And we ask why.

Why is cancer more apparent than smiles?
Why are too many barefoot on tiles and others fly through the night avoiding the tiles and the falling meteor shower?
Why is food trashed inside and outside the garbage that is mankind, when the garden of starvation is desperately drowning in drought and deprivation?
Why?
Why are you labeled as gay or bi or a line? When love is love and love is kisses – the sincere kisses, given only in airports.
Why are most prayers we hear amid hospital walls?
Beseeching  voices, walled and chained, like us all.
If not by wrists, then by ankles; and if not by ankles then by mouth, body, mind, and existence.
Why?

Why do you exist as colors?
Desperate to organize into cynical categories and play Russian Roulette.
We see colors too.
Red when you’re angry, gold when you’re greedy, green when envious, and blue when you’re beaten.

Why?
They ask us with their hands sewed at the palms muttering a wish at the ones who need them most. And as the hopeless fall into the years of captivity, the roles are reversed.

We are the dead.
And to the wishing girl and starving man and bullied boy and wounded soldiers and corrupt youth:
There is hope.

Because you will be dead.
And you won’t want to live.