Stranger

My end begins aimless Nothing led by my steps But my death led to greatness So it was foretold. . . honor Among my strangers The graves dug around me grew numerous Like flies to a corpse, rotten and forgotten above My stone is headed but by one line, “Honor was his path for he Was washed in the grace of God.” Among the aimless, the found The dead and alive, The named and forgotten We are all but strangers Using blood as our tag The bodies laid before me are rinsed out and emptied Lacking flesh and blood stained now with dirt Upon the remains of, now forever wandering Now nothing remains but a freshly painted slate Of men who were strangers to themselves The pond lies still, Before me is a face Bore with two holes With a third above the left brow “My God. . .” I said, “My God.” Those golden fields once thought to be my reward Was but a fantasy implanted long, long ago Dying with honor without ever knowing my own name And now I lay wake cold with fellow strangers Who too were stuffed, and then hollowed The wind frozen The sun burnt The grass dead The rain flooded The bodies gone I misunderstood every trial before me Before I knew who, I was there and gone My reflection remains empty As my body turns to ash in the sudden wake of mine The singularity that was my life – nothing. “I am a stranger, I was gone before I was there. I was dead before The great fire of life– Burning away Down an endless path. My name is null, My body is used, And here I lie before life Before I ever knew Who I was meant to be, and Who my fellow strangers were. . .”