Cold Violence

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To kill in hot savagery like a beast

Is understandable.  It is forgivable and curable.

But to kill by design, deliberately, without wrath

That is the sullen labor that prefers Hell….

It is man, the inventor of cold violence,

Death as waste, who has made himself lonely among the creatures, and set himself aside, so that he cannot work in the sun with hope,

Or sit at peace in the shade of any tree.

          Wenell Berry

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They sit in the halls of power

The cold ones

The calculating ones

 

They have lied and cheated their way there

Into those exalted places

They have risen high

Carried by the currents of hate and fear

 

What goes on behind those eyes?

They stare out at the world

Not seeing the pain

Unable to penetrate their own selfish desires

And look beyond

 

Do they lie awake at night,

Orchestrating evil?

Do they dream of wealth, palaces,

Crowns

 

Do their hearts swell

At the idea of dominating others

All others?

Is pain the raw flesh their egos feed on?

 

Oh, what they do when the sunrises

Moving from dreams and mad texts

To executive orders

 

They covet countries and seek to seize them

They rain bombs on faceless people

They murder with impunity,

Causing unjustified death in the name of justice 

They torment and coerce

 

They crush the vulnerable

The immigrant, the refugee, the poor, and the sick

Anyone not them

 

Because they can

It is in their power to do so

They dispense pain and hopelessness

And smirk with delight

 

This is their time

But it is only a moment

For evil begets evil

It turns in on itself

 

As they crush and devour others

They gnaw on their own foul flesh

 

Violating love, betraying God

Is unnatural

 

Woe will come upon these merchants of oppression

These perpetrators of cold violence

 

Hate and fear are unsustainable

Such Empires cannot stand

They will fall

And great will be their fall

 

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Micah 2:3 

Now, I am devising against this people an evil

    from which you cannot remove your necks,

and you shall not walk arrogantly,

    for it will be an evil time.