Darkness Comes

I am the one who rapes your daughters. I am the one who shoots down your sons.

I am the one who forces your fathers into submission. I am the one who prematurely kills your mothers.

I am the one who looks away out of convenience, and the one who takes away with impunity, not care.

I am the one who's atrocities are too numerous to count, too details and varied to tally, and too widespread to stop.

I am the one who haunts the dreams of the oppressed, the voiceless, the hopeless.

And yet, why shouldn’t my eye turn to you, those who have unleashed me? Why should I stay my hand for you, those who have foolishly freed me?

Do you not also have daughters?

Do you not also have sons? 

Will your fathers not crumble beneath my greed?

Will your mothers’ wombs not still bleed?

When your victims are gone, fed to me by your fury, I will be too large to contain, too powerful to be tamed.

Will you then look at me with fear and disdain as you try vainly to kill me with your weapons? 

Did no one tell you that bullets cannot defeat ideology, that violence does not destroy itself? 

Did no one tell you that all those who would have stood to protect you now lay slaughtered at your feet, at your behest and ever urgent request?

When I come for you, do not look on me with surprise and outrage. Do not look within me for mercy and compassion. You, my liberators, have shown me the way, and it is my joy to reap what you have sown.