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Copyright © 2019 by Antarah Crawley. All Rights Reserved.

Why birds do you chirp, at this grave hour?

When all things are dead, when waking corpses

Brood over books of life lessons passed,

And sleeping corpses lie in graves, their beds;

Its four o’clock, and the people in the

Real world will wake in an hour or two;

Waking people, though dead, and I am dead,

Though waking still, and the sun is dead, too.

By this time, the dead have succumb to fate:

Sleep. But still, I am as awake as you.

The sun peeks though now, though still not wake,

The sky, you know the one, a light grey blue.

Though I’ve tried, I’ve slept not a wink. Why, birds

Do you chirp when all things are dead, but you?

I hymned a roar from the inner depths

of the machine surrounding. The howl fell

on ears of deaf, as did my heartbeat’s pounding.

The apparatus groaned around me. “Oil!”

cried my master. My job in here’s to tend

this beast, that it may then whirr faster.

I can’t see the product of my toil

from inside this grave machine. I have but one God

I follow: The King of Gasoline.

All the gears that crank above me creek with

shrieks of men, who threw themselves

upon the gears, which, laughing, ground them in.

And these gears to which I tend

extend up to the moon. A place that sounds

like paradise compared to this boiler room.

“Hark!” I call again, my beckon echoin’

through the gears. “Let me go,” I call to them

as if they all had ears.

They heard me but they didn’t stop;

kept clicking into place. The shrieks of dying men

chimed back, so I sang deeper into space.

there is one war that every man wages,

every man wins

everyman loses.

this is the only war.

if you fight it with a friend

another country

or a dirty criminal

know that you fought it with yourself

first.

no matter party line, religion,

or even sexual orientation,

this is the only war.

and when you face other men in other wars, know

between you all

that you’re really fighting one war.

that’s the long fought war

the one you didn’t see yourself giving in to

but it came.

that’s the one you were gonna hold out for

the one you were gonna use to prove yourself somethin

but it came.

that’s the fight you fought to fight

knowing that you’d lose.

and that’s the blissful agony

in blowing your refuse.

That’s the one you kneel over

cursing why you did

gnashing your gnarled teeth yet laughing–

you’d do it all again.

then there’s the time. the time you really packed it all in. you know

you got your point across. but you just had to cross that line.

and then you really give it your all. there’s no turning back.

it’s not gonna be you. it’s not gonna be him.

you fight, you fight that bitter fight.

and it all comes to a head.

and you’ve won. and you’ve lost.

–you feel it—that’s the real “fuck me.”–that’s the fight that makes and breaks you

–and you’d do it all again.

that’s what women’ll never understand. they can’t. it’s not a sexist thing.

it’s a man thing.

it’s the war.

the one you wage, lose, and win, over and over and over