A world in ruins

I am the blistered voice in the crowd,
the splintering scream that cracks the air,
while you, seated on your gilded thrones of apathy,
drain the last drop from a well that wasn’t yours.

They call it friendship, this leeching of trust,
where loyalty’s a rag wrung dry,
sopping wet with your needs, never mine.
I am left with rust-stained echoes and hollowed eyes,
clinging to your empty promises like dust in drought.

You talk about futures—about hope—
but I see your hands, fingers stained with greed,
building a pyre for the young to burn on.
These kids don’t owe you their lives,
they won’t thank you for the ashed skies
and oceans thick with plastic and regret.

Where’s the truth in this harvest of lies?
You’ve laid bare a barren world,
withered and cracked, teetering on the edge,
a hollowed promise balanced on our silence.

We are complicit, too, I know,
with our scrolling and sighing, eyes glazed and dull.
We let it slide, we avert our gaze,
waiting, in our cowardice, for someone braver.

But I am awake now, fists clenched,
rage thick in my throat, bitter as smoke—
for the friendships I bled for,
for the world sold out to the highest bidder,
for the next generation, handed down scraps,
playing in fields littered with fragments of glass.

This is my scorched earth, my damnation
of a world in ruins, our inheritance of ash.

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