It is the macabre talons that grip onto our shoulders
Weighing us down with a misery ever so heavy
It is the rain soaked earth that beckons us home
As it pulls our ankles further
Into a quicksand of hopelessness
It is the clouded skies forbidding us of light
As we are drowned in the damp and thick shadows
This feeling is oversupplied, soaking our bones
Making them nothing but puddles of agony
As we collapse into tears of lost dreams
And wishes we should have known would not come true

It is the coldness of the air biting through our skin
Freezing us to our very cores that no fire could thaw
It is the monotonous landscape stretching the hillsides
Never changing from a foggy and overcast prison we call home
It is the birds soaring above screeching a depressing cry
Longing to find the mate it was forced to leave behind
The color has been withdrawn and the beauty withered away
The warmth snatched and held captive nowhere to be found
This place we now call home, so once roared with magnificence
The sun beaming down upon everything once filled with life
But disaster soon rampaged, and with it, took our souls

It is the nighttime lingering throughout the once perfect day
The bitter breeze whispering curses and secrets strangely muffled
It is the battered and broken houses piled closely around the town
Filled with lost inhabitants who were formerly overcome with joy
Now they stay enclosed within their confines, hostages full of fear
It was not always this way; we were once welcoming and friendly
We accepted all with open arms and open doors and open hearts
But perhaps that was our mistake from the very beginning
It is the innocence and naïve-ness in all of us that has led us here
Cold, alone, broken and without any courage to change our ways
It is the cruel world that taught us that nothing is forever

It was the billowing cloud of smoke that rolled over the land
Engulfing all that was illuminated and all that was lively
It was the panicked screams of my neighbors running to hide
But with nowhere to go and utterly lost in confusion
The waves of blackness crashed into the vibrant world we once knew
It was the sharp pain surrounding our bodies and filling our weak lungs
To where we could no longer breathe, no longer stand and fight
The tidal waves of malevolence kept pushing its way into our home
Our home once filled with peace and calmness and guiltless life
Now it was being ripped apart at the seams with the reality of hatred
Of brutality which we never stood the slightest chance against

It was the deathly silence that awoken my icy and frail body
The place I called home was abducted from me forever
It was the emptiness and eerie stillness that destroyed our spirits
Forever gone were the luminous skies above and lush lands below
Now all that lay before us was lifeless soils and smoky horizons
Not a speck of happiness or hope was sensed from then on
We locked our doors and closed the holes formed in our chests
No more laughter was heard, no more cheers released
The wickedness of the world had eaten us alive with no mercy
It is the vicious reality that life can be a crushable dream
And we are no more than hopeful pons in an unfair game of chess

It is the landscape wasted away to dry dust and ash
And the pallid heavens above that imprison our optimism
It is the sadness-filled essences that reap this world
As we muddle through our now meaningless and vanished lives
I walked down the flattened path of earth to the blackened river
Breathing in the stale and stagnant air my lungs detested
I reached the trickling stream watching the water merely pool there
Without a path or motivation to travel further down stream
All around the river edges lay the flakes of the once fertile grasses
Now nothing more than the rest of the pasty land surrounding it
But as I looked up the morose stream, there stood the thriving sapling of hope