From whence cometh strength ?

A rush in a side by side, an absence of fear on the rides, gleaming-eyed steering, searing, leaping thru the Ides normally marched

Beer-battered into dark rooms and
Ultraviolent and hasty retreat from the wombs and
licking wounds and injurious seasons for seasoning, tasting waded reeds and chasing reasoning for the aching kingdom of war--
praying to be on posters for thousands to adore.
Please sir can I have some more?

From whence cometh strength? Begging pantheons to make you famous
stringing yourself , ready able and aimless
desperate to be used, and you don't care, here or there 
struggling to asphyxiate , better or worse for the wear
whether youre ready or not cast off thru the breach
parachuting , torn by the wind and rain, biting into a beach
where thousands lay before you
bound together in rifle bolts between silence
so vast and deep as history crunches under your heels
surely now, you recognize that you've forgotten how to chew 
when life gives you this large mouthful back to you

From whence cometh strength?

As meteors crack into horizons, and you feel so small in your fly by wire living, where it's lead you, and in your hubris sought to fight
the end of the world with these timid tools patrolling the ends of your fists

From whence cometh strength ?
When you drink of God and your lips still parch at the autumn of all things, all beings
and you mumble these names without meaning, staring up into ceilings so high you know them to be staring back?

From whence cometh strength?
As the void coos down to you and drains you of every ounce, in every corner , and your burning body is eased with a cooling touch ,
your tools of Valor, though you clutch
are already remnants of a long forgotten past.

Here, in the ashen plane, above a world buried and maimed, where man can come to greet the stars again. 
Tired boots, shorn and shed, feet rooted in a new world devoid of thrill and scorn 
Flame-baptized under banners long abandoned
to root into a world that, for the first time feels like home.

Gasping gladiators in the fall of Rome 
From whence cometh strength? 
In a world now where the strong have survived, and the ends have turned and churned tides
Spitting out the worthy, names and numbers untithed 
from lives of slavery, reborn with new lives
from whence cometh strength?