Some mornings, it is like the city is a different world. The city is grey and dim, air made dense with tiny flecks of moisture like the reverse of a spark. The flavour of the city in the air is dampened, replaced for a time with the tastes of wetness and night, touched with a spice that can only be found at this sort of time. The narrow street is draped in shadows like honey, slowly dripping away as they are met by the rays of living sun. A gentle breath of the wind ruffled a nearby flag, disrupting for a second the supernatural silence of the greyed-out world around. The tiny, crimson leaf that is the least remaining on the nearby spindly maple shivers as the air hits it. A man walks along the sidewalk, black umbrella bouncing up and down with his every step, as if a toad hopping along a grey log. For what seems an eternity, there is nobody else. Breath fogs against the cool glass of the window, slowly creeping in to block for a moment the sight of outside. When it is wiped away, the world has awoken and is normal again. People, who could have never gotten here like this in the moment unseen, bustle back and forth, rushing to get to the places they need to go on time. The silence is broken with the murmur of voices and the nearby growls of engines shattering the quiet like glass. The seemingly other world has gone.

Human beings

Are

Happiness.

Not 

Misery.

We don't hate and despise one another.

There's room for everyone.

But

Greed has poisoned our souls with hate and bloodshed.

We are cynical, hard and unkind.

We think and feel violent.

The misery is upon us.

The passing of greed.

The bitterness.

Soldiers,

Brutes,

Men.

Don't give yourselves to these unnatural machines.

Soldiers!

A group of men.

You, the people, have no power over them.

You, the people, have the power to make life free and beautiful,

To make life wonderful.

Yet,

We fight greed, hate and intolerance.

Let us fight for a world of reason and progress.

This is what will lead us all to happiness.

A Found poem taken from Charlie Chaplin's "Speech for Humanity"

We saw the Devil on Zion Hill and he bared his dirty fangs at us.

We saw him, and his seven heads.

We saw him and his 49 eyes that made us grimace, and our skin crawled.

Each day he would come and take from us.

Each day it was something different.

He wore our possessions like gifts.

Gold crowns graced his heads and danced around his fingers.

Ivory weapons stood firmly at his side and diamonds gleamed in his ears.

His breath caused our tongues to curl from the pungent odour of crude oil.

Battle armour did grace his colorless body.

The Devil was plump. His belly round and his cheeks full, yet he always complained that he was starving.

We saw the devil on Zion Hill

He called us filthy.

He said our ways are evil, our actions rippled with corruption.

He called our credence with the natural world foolish.

Yet, at night, when the cold wind howled and the only source of light stood 

the barren moon.

He bows his seven heads, folds his opaque wings and faintly whispers to the village

"Be careful, for one day you might end up like me."

We saw the Devil on Zion Hill and he had seven heads.