The dreary sludge slinked along and oozed into our intimate conscience.

The thick pernicious inferno of fear infested closer, ever closer,

Burning the life from creation and suffocating reason with anti-reason.

Pathways were overtaken; what seemed a way of escape was, infact, a trap.  

 

It crept its way into our yards, under our fences, and up against our doors.

The hot plumbic gunk penetrated all boundaries, stole all comfort.

We tried to flee, but the way was snuffed - walled off by the febrile death.

The experts told us there was a source of the sludge, but they were the source.

 

The out-walkers ventured out on top of the cooled solid, proof it was tamable!

They called outloud into the windows and in the wind to Come out!  Come out!

So the experts targeted the indwellers all the more and consumed them as prey

They used their victims as a sacrifice and the victims hated the out-walkers.

 

We thought, surely it will cool out there somewhere, soon.

But the experts threw on heat and we looked to them ever more for answers.

We barricaded ourselves in; we washed ourselves clean - just like they told us,

But it only made us more exposed and the inferno got closer and more torrid.

 

Like a young root exploiting a weakness in the rock it found its way in.

It invaded the cracks in our foundations and set the floor aglow.

We thought, we can wait it out, it moves too slow to be lethal;  

The experts used the extra time against us, willfully, they mutated the sludge.

 

Data will keep us safe, we thought, but we measured wrongly - the wrong thing.

It was not the thing that was the threat - it was the deceptive tenacious sludge.

We tried to think our way through, strategize and hypothesize,

But the lustful molten muck recalculated, rearranged, regrouped.

 

First it took our attention, 

Then it took our sun, 

Then our sanity,

And then, like a covered candle, it took our air.

 

It took our love and made it hate; 

Our wonder and made it judgement.

It took our hope and made it apathy.

It took our patience and made it indifferent.

 

It took our truths 

It took our friendships

It took our freedom

It took our sovereignty

 

It took our time together

It took our time with God

It took childhood from our children

It took family from our parents

 

It took the breeze. 

It took the sky.  

It took the laughter.  

It took the Life.

 

It took our breath.  

It took our heart.

It took our compassion.  

It took our reason.  

 

It took our community.  

It took our understanding - it took even our attempt to understand.

It took our touch.

It took our time - now forever lost to the cosmos.

 

...It took us away from ourselves.

 

And we let it.

We watched and waited till our houses burned down 

And we watched as our neighbors burned up.

We watched as our loved ones died, not from the thing, but from the sludge.

 

And we watched as they segregated us

And we watched as they brainwashed us

And we watched as we saw their sludge factory fervently making more

And we invited that heinous magma in 

 

We told ourselves it would keep us warm.

And we said it would fortify our homes.

And we believed it was our ally.

And we put up boundaries for the sludge as if we were in control.

 

And the sludge grew and the experts kept making more

And it invaded right past our boundaries 

Right past our love

Right past our comprehension

Right past our reason

Right past our deathbeds

Right into our souls

 

And it laughed as it took our precious ones and made them die alone.

 

- Dawn Carlisle