The Ended
Image credit: Digital collage 'Oil Well Fires, Kuwait' (2019) by artist David Taborn
“The Ended” focuses on a very real anxiety I’ve had as a Mexican of a world in which dehumanization and greed is the driving force in society. The neglect of empathy is the neglect of mental health.
Stripped of what is human
So pain’s no longer there
No criers nor the maddened
No laughter’s in the air
Broken fights of envy
With all the death to share
The race to be the wealthy
Had they only been aware
The absence burns in cities
Cities built by hands of joy
What's left is shallow pity
The people robbed of love dense soil
The world echoes in silence
And faith, it used to fill the space
It all ended with violence
Fuck everything, made to go to waste
Centuries of history end with disaster
And the ashes left behind
Couldn’t fade away much faster
Where there is no fate to bind
All the tales mended by time
Passed down from old to young
Rusted past the truth to find
Where the stories roots are gone
Stripped of what is human
So pain’s no longer there
No criers nor the maddened
But no laughter’s in the air
Broken fights of envy
With all the death to share
The race to be the wealthy
Had they only been aware
Author’s Note: I wrote “The Ended” when I was 15 as a commentary regarding capitalistic greed, and how humanity is in cycles of cruelty that will eventually end in disaster- and ending rooted in dehumanization and lack of empathy.