The color of destruction is not black;
It's gray.
Black is what was never there
The damned have black expanses
In lieu of faces.
They originate nothing;
They can't originate anything.
They lead nobody, except one another,
Like the blind, like lemmings;
Individually and collectively, they're nugatory,
Going through the motions,
Resignedly welcoming the creeping amniotic fog;
No love, less life;
No values, always compromise;
Giving more and more, till they've whittled themselves away to revenants,
Moronic, robotic, zombielike; they
Shuffle somnambulistically, aimlessly through a dead gray city of trash,
An astoundingly vast gray decrepit forest of concrete buildings
Beneath a sheltering smoky pewter sky
Where a tepid and rancid wind ebbs and flows, but never stops blowing
On a long inexorable highway to nowhere
Harsh and abrasive undefoot
Without sudden turnings,
Without mileposts,
Without signs.
© 2008 by Mark Andrew Holmes.