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
These parting gifts, bolt pistols
Console the rest, the remainder

Too bad the tribute's paid to lives that relegate these thrones
To lives spent valuing the runners-up, are known
Are to be neither fleeting nor desirable, but nothing surprises me these days
I just sit and watch the boxcars roll by and wait

Patient
Unattended
So patient
So unattended

A package under a terminal bench and
A short fuse to scatter
Steady hands if I forget to remember

That better lives have
Been lived in
The margins and
Locked in the prisons
And lost on the gallows
Than have ever been enshrined in palaces

It's not your fault
There's nothing you can do
It's just the way it is
There's nothing we can do