Hunger tied our bellies
into gnawing, burning knots.
Our crops withered in the poisoned earth.
All we could do was watch them rot.
Through our children and the elderly
the sickness ran unimpeded.
The toxin was in the water.
For aid our village pleaded.

The garrison at Strange Hill
refused our imploring hand.
The bribe we could not pay
worth more than child, woman, or man.
We cursed their endless greed
and cried to God to see them fall.
They laughed at our feeble rage,
safe and snug behind their wall.

But on that day our anger
became a living breathing thing,
fed on our desperation
with vengeance as its drink.
And so ten thousand of our living
marched upon Strange Hill that day
with farmers’ tools and wagons
and bony horses for the fray.

In the field the garrison commander
tried to sway us from our path.
His demand for sanity
fell easy victim to our wrath.
He consigned our wretched chances
to a place between slim and none.
We cried, “Better to perish fighting
than the certain death to come!”

We eyed each other for a time
across a field soon soaked with blood
and at the cry of our commanders
with screaming madness rushed
toward the sickening collision
between fates too much the same
to quarrel at the difference
between the rational and the insane.

Heavenly Father, they don’t stand a chance! They’re outnumbered!
They are tired, hungry sacrificial lambs for the corporate forces at Strange Hill.
Without news of the battle, I fear that my love has fallen upon the field of blood.
If you can, I beg you, spare his life, for he is my heart and soul!
And if it is not your will, I pray You, make his passing swift.