Together

All the honesty I ever need
is written on the face of a criminal
caught in time
stuck with the clock's tick-tock
and the rock of the floor
when the warden click-clangs closed
the door to an adjacent cell.

And the smell is horrendous:
the stench of rotting days
and wasted time, of burned potential
and burdened families coping with
the incomparable loss
of faith in one's own loved ones.

People are all created equally capable
of committing countless horrors,
the chilling reality that we are most defenseless
against the depravity of our own minds
and strangers light the way
for other men to reach their end.

Until there is a
stop
to nonsense,
and dastardly deeds no longer need undoing,
when love replaces lust
and the last star is burned to dust,
can we rise together and face the world and say:
We were Here,
and We changed Something.