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The Destroyer
Daniel Raphael ~ 1977
It stands there today
just as it did yesterday
and the days before that.
...silently it waits, as a trap.
It was waiting when I was child,
waiting for years, as it always had.
I can remember it ---
gray, massive, awesome, and silent.
Its function was never clear.
It seemed that it had always been there.
A social enigma, a problem unsolved,
it waits for them to enter and devolve.
I asked my mother, "What was that place?"
as we passed by. I looked to her face,
"Oh," she said, "that's the place for bad
men."
but didn't say what had happened to them.
Many years have come and gone
since I passed there with my mom,
but the memories of that mysterious place
never left. Society's relic to all of us,
an old skeleton of our society
tucked, and hidden guardedly away,
to be forgotten easily.
It's a dreary, ugly memory
of our baser natures.
This silent gray object a reminder
they are still there. Those within
not seen....
I had forgotten it.
Though I passed by many like it,
I didn't give them much attention...
my mind wasn't pricked to asked questions.
I grew up away from the destroyers.
Those gray behemoths with spiny towers.
Massive walls what do you guard?
What secrets do you hide?
I never thought I would ever
come within those barren walls towering
with steely gates, locks, guns; and
penetrating stares
from all within, who serve time there.
Green. Ah, I was green
as spring's fresh coat. "Wet behind
my ears," they said. I believed them.
I was a stranger to that ken.
I became one of those within.
Employed there like some of them.
I found that all who come within surely
change,
the same as those who enter with their
chains.
It is no respecter of status,
position, job, or title. We are useless
to rail against its nature,
one of bitterness, cynicism, and failure.
It exists, as a destroyer,
paying no attention or respect for
any man who enters its gates.
He should hope to wake before it's too late
--
to leave while he is only tempered
slightly by its scathing atmosphere,
and only slightly polished and shaped
before becoming brittle and eroded.
I walked beneath its walls and towers,
I was so short. They were always taller.
They degraded me and turned me gray.
I changed a lot, and one day
I didn't recognize myself.
I had changed. I had placed myself
within that coffin of pallid steel and
concrete,
and served it, while it ate
my heart, and my soul.
The destroyer took its toll.
I walked around alive, or so I thought.
It's the same for all who come to serve it.
Its hold is tenacious and it will frisk
you and search you. "Enter here at your own
risk,"
should read the sign upon the door.
No deference given for kept or keeper.
Equally it levels all and wears all
to uniform smoothness inside its walls.
Grinding, grinding all the time.
You will be worn past that line
you set for yourself
if you don't get off its shelf
of steel and concrete.
GET UP! Get on your feet
and walk away!
Don't remember those days
of bitterness, hostility and cynicism.
WALK AWAY. Forget them.
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