Folie à Deux

I

The people who walk past
the steady river, pulling and pushing,
are the ones who forget to look around
as they try to outdo their own species.

Building, constructing, making, inventing -
trying to be greater and grander and better.
Memorials of marble and chambers of gold,
steel reaching up to touch the Heavens -
We are God.

And that lonely river slowly rises,
greeting the grass
while just above its banks are cogs and wheels and gears
created by Gods
and challenged by Devils.

The machines clang and spin and rumble and roar,
whispering mysteries and creating secrets,
as the Gods and Devils declare war
and pledge to destroy the other.

The tiny bronze cogs have tiny bronze teeth
and the wheels are detailed with foreign writing
and with a simple touch, they move.
The Gods of Marble and Devils of Gold
are creating their newest masterpiece -
death and destruction and rubble;
leaving behind broken memories of horror and terror.

The Devils attempt to reconstruct the world,
to change it and build it up from a new beginning -
But they are not Devils
and we are not God.

Slowly, the tide rises with warm crimson
and the feeble invention for a dark time is corrupted
by salt and silt
until the gears and cogs no longer move.

One final time the mechanism roars into life
and announces its destruction
with an empty, hollow boom
from barrel and cannon and smoke and death
which write a new language of thunder,
then the river rolls under.