To See the Mighty Fallen

As 2006 shifts to 2007
a nine-year-old dares his brother
Now, his hero sucks helium through dead lips
And his parents hear a high-pitched wail
every night for the next ten years

As Homer writes his Odyssey
a boy from Troy hits the floor
mottled and marred (burnt red and flaky black) he cries
while respectable citizens (and poets) pass by
Against ally brick, that orphan dies
and his neighbor is delighted, to find and acquire
the new breathing room, on their routine door step

In '29 a taxi cab stopped for her, on main street
Later she left nail polish and fingernail grit,
clawed into thick, tinted windows
Gasping for anything to breathe, but fumes,
and anything to drink, but sweat
It was written off, as suicide, of course
(third teenager that year, after all)
So the sheriff went to lunch with his son,
A taxi cab driver

In ages of ice, she scaled the steep cliffs, of the great land
So ready to feel more than pain and hunger,
so ready to see her people finally warm, around a fire
And when she was greeted by an arrow to the back
no fire was there to warm her

Plaster smoldered into ashes,
come to choke 'em in the mornin
Smoke curled around his legs,
suckin' em down to oblivion!
And when he heard his sister wailin'
He couldn't come a' runnin cause
hell was out to get 'em and embers
stopped his yellin right quick, it did
S'true!

Knowing she'd miss him in the ashes,
didn't give him his usual cocky smile,
Pompeii's last days were coming,
(exploding from the heavens)
and as he plunged through burning ashes,
he realized, he'd never even told her,
"Calpurnia, I love you"