the grey crusade

[__mr_blue_sky__]

The war came silently
on a thief's feet in the night
as wars seldom do.

It crept over the black roofs of the town
sealing out the moonlight
and before dawn, it crept away,
to its dark, wet grendelcave,
hiding from the sun
behind rotting shutters on yellowed plaster,
under gutters in dim alleyways,
and between the cracks in mens' hearts.

Even so, its effects were... brobdingnagian.

Slate gray clouds thundered quietly through the air
like a downbound train consumed by fever
while jazz musicians waited in bread lines
shuffling their feet against the cold,
instruments like albatrosses hanging heavily from their necks
while the poets became backwards-talking prophets,
preaching nonsense from streetlamp pulpits,
frothing madly at anyone foolish enough to listen.

Moths in their wool coats tumbled
through the dark corridors and crooked streets
the fog thick with pale blue melancholy,
almost tangible in the wet air.

A thin breeze snaked over tin roofs and around dripping corners
playing an elegy of emptiness,
a lonely dirge echoing over
every broken sidewalk and dusty window.

The clockwork king at the center of town chimed on the hour
his hollow, false sound rolling over the city
like a shroud on a dead man's face,
providing a steady, sorrowful harmony
with the wind's stark chorus.

The faces of the town were painted,
painted in quiet, agonized desperation,
their masks trying to conceal frantic eyes,
madly searching for deliverance
from the cold sorrow that stung their cheeks.

Color drained from the world,
the sky lost its hue,
paintings lost their vibrant timbre
poems' meanings became lost in swirling tidepools
and imagination walked on creaking crutches,
begging in the dead-ended alleys.

The war was won,
started and finished before anyone was aware,
and without a single shot fired.

The casualties were innumerable.