'Pledge' by Craig Steven Joseph Lacey.

I'll bleed a river of tears before
I say: "peace comes easy."
To those who do not remember:
"Don't!" —
Those who do: "I doubt it."
-
Clear are the memories,
But I wished they weren't.
I've seen too much, but can
Come back center to say:
"You're fortunate to forget."
-
Bliss is not ignorance, but
Ignorance is forgetting,
And Utopia is not peaceful,
Unless blissful—for peace

Is always the hard-won fight,

-

Over and over again: to owe

The hardship of visions of peace;
On the backs of the voiceless;
The faceless; the Amensaic,
For who the pain is never felt,

-
Because nothing ever did happen
After all: as dreams enter days

And nights, the histories of wars

Are fantasies of lost and lonely

Longings, no more.

-

But for who's sake really?

It is for the sake of peace;
For Utopia's great bases of columns
Sunk in to Time's chasms of shadow,

From where chaos rises its tide.
-
Dare I light upon it;
Dare the visionary;
Dare he more than

A million deaths,

Down, down in to that abyss.
-
There is no choice but the illusion
Of that which makes for the rest of us
Pain and suffering, mitigated;
Corruption and the eternal
Devouring thing, managed.

-

© Craig Steven Joseph Lacey, 2020.

Image. Eerie Corridor (1999) by Siegfried Zademack.