Culpability

Culpability

What a fine pair we make:

Clutching paltry patches of precious little dignity to cover our barenesses.

We can't be decent but we can be civil.

Civil?

Yeah, right. Civil.

I'm saying that's what you choose to call it.

I'm saying that it may masquerade as such

But what I'm being is . . .

Responsible.

Yes. Responsible.

We have been through too much,

put each other through enough,

we know too well

The less than sunny side of things.

We have fought battles over trifles,

Launched emotional nuclear assaults

over stakes we now regard with dusty regret

and shame.

We have built walls and torn them down

with our own hands

Piling rubble into altars to our ruined pride,

Soaked the dust with the libation of our tears.

We have sacrificed more than we could afford;

still-smouldering effigies of rebound after rebound surround us,

A gallery of lost causes and broken dreams,

their empty eyes following our every move.

So excuse me if I cannot be civil

I can only be me.

Battle-scarred, war-weary, jaded little old me

(Yeah; you ain't so hot yourself.)