Sleeping masters roused
To burning homes from beds.
Steeping toddlers plucked
From their watery deaths:
Ribbons, plaques and soft-soap
Are the ephemeral rewards
Paid to the slaves whose selfless acts accord

A higher value to their masters,
While parting gifts (bolt pistols)
Console the rest. the remainder.

Too bad the tributes paid
To lives that relegate these thrones
To lives spent valuing the runners-up, are known
To be neither fleeting nor desirable.
But nothing surprises me these days.
I just sit and watch the box-cars
Roll by and wait.

Patient.
Unattended.
A package under a terminal bench.
A short fuse to scatter
Steady hands if i forget to remember
That better lives have
Been lived in the margins,
Locked in the prisons
And lost on the gallows
Than have ever been enshrined in palaces.