Promise Lost, by Amory McKeever

Where is the country to which we pledged our honor
Where are the husbands we had hoped for our daughters
In this democracy of crank callers
It seems we've fallen much farther
Instead of knights in shinning armor
We've got some make-believe ballers
Wearing bling on their collars
Buying votes for a dollar

Where is the future we hoped to build for our babies
Where is the love we had promised to our ladies
Because lately we've just become crazies
Like a pack of dogs full of rabies
Shaming ourselves for the dailies
Like and share so much that we're lazy
Our sacred vows became maybes
For better or worse are just sayings

Where is the war we said would end all wars
Where is the mother who sends her children no more
As we turn into whores
For the heat of rifled bores
Our brothers in a desert of gore
While we lose our freedoms on shore
And we'll never settle the score
Until we're all in the floor

Sawdust, by Amory McKeever

(image courtesy of Aida Makoto)

Cut down in our prime
split in twain
discarded like pain
to make something fine

So here we are
in mountainous piles
you can see for miles
carcasses of poplar

A graveyard of timber
the scraps off a table
the skeleton of a maple
going out with a whimper

Plea mercy from the saws
no justice no peace
to know we've been fleeced
we can hear the applause

They took what they could
to craft what they want
like idiot savants
but we're more than just wood

We're living things just like them
they bloom from our work
we're the sun through the murk
there's no flower without a stem

And gathered in their rooms
among adorned furniture
they spared no expenditure
to ignore our doom

To forget they were us
that the shine of their polish
is because we're demolished
they shall never discuss

They are merely what's left
when you shave away the damned
the poor and the scammed
their value is a theft

So here we lie
in mountainous piles
you can see for miles
the tree of life left to die