There once was a country, a country I could enjoy. Call my own. It no longer exists. Crow clouded Sundays are all that is left. The people have left, no one to talk to or be. A vacuum has sucked the remains of the stars and rained them down on my eyes. Sounds of emptiness echo through burned out forests of steel and concrete. Perhaps a tree will grow here again. Wood of hope and peace. Grain left to the imagination. Now animals of titanium and snows of shrouds lifted from the deserts of the mind rumble through plains and prairies. My country is gone. Ancient flesh burns faster and brighter, green to the bone. A walk is an act of treason and sight is wired to the crude halls of propaganda. No one here may say why.

Many have come to pray. A wish for a king, a leader of peace. He will not come. Minds have been reprogrammed and echoes of ancient desires rattle about the land. Behold your king, a tyrant of miniscule talents. A man picked for his lack of conviction and charisma. A man manipulated at will by self-programming machines. He is to be pitied and reviled. Spit upon this false savior, cast a stone and cast him out. Let him wander the desert of his soul for eternity. The image of his face burned on the coin of my mind, a treasure for no god. Remove him, pluck his eyes from the inside of my head hang him high enough for no one to see. Oblivion is not enough for me. Where is my country?

Words on words. Pictures of hell and words of nothing. Sand running through the claws of the beast as he counts time -- a drummer in a silent band. March is the coldest month, a time of fires and fear. The smoke of a million points of light put out on a pike. Death rattles and screams accompanied by grinding sand and bones. "Too much," he cries and flies for the mountains in horror. The foothills try to hide as death hurtles past on his raging retreat. Red and black mist settles in his place, the smog of unknowing. Show me my country.

Show me my country. A demand that cannot be. Neither demand nor country can exist. It is not permitted. The well of hope has been poisoned by greed, buried in rhetoric and erased from the map. We are wanderers without wonder. Nomads at sea, our anchor lines cut and sails slashed. Adrift in doubt and confusion. Perfect feed for a fickle wind. Even the gulls avoid our ghost ship with its green slick wake of bile and hate, a mile long sewer of disregard.