What do you gain by winning the world but destroying yourself?
-Mark 8:36


gargoyles watch the corners of our lives

1. Home-front

vigilantes guard the empty streets
guns in hand, poised to shoot the shadowed ghosts

creative initiators of group think

secret codes summon comrades to arms

their eyes watching strangers passing by

insiders pass inspection by winking their eyes
they're the ones with guns fixed at your head

big brother peeps o'er our shoulders without shame

eyes staring at us as a warning

trained to pounce on words deemed illegal

ready to drag us to the cages of the condemned

it's freedom that must be preserved at the price of condemnation
freedoms founded on judaic-christian codes
laws, once decent, now packaged to exclude
selective suppression to preserve the status quo

2.War-front

bring home the bodies aerated by bullets
tell the nation of their noble cause
they tried to break the systems of domination
join the enemy to view life through their eyes
unaccepted were their efforts at equality
they sealed their efforts by firing their guns

3.  Church-font

upon catherdrals' corners sit gargoyles sporting smiles
grotesque and comical, inviting a quest
why do the nations rage, sending their young to war
while the initiators of conflict rest covered in their beds?

though wars are won one dead soldiers at a time

the knights are guarded by the gargoyles of stone

their names erased as we trod upon their graves