20th Century Dragon
Iron horse:
Steel beast roaring, belching hot diesel-laced breath. How do you stand before the 20th century dragon of metal and gears and wheels? Do you stand for yourself, or something more? What word drives you to such a choice? Perhaps it was freedom, or love; passion or reason. Perhaps they beat it out of you before the end. Was it even a choice? Will you ever see the end that you dreamt of? How will your family know that it was you, and you alone, that stood to face the dragon, when everyone else was gone? Now you are gone, and there are those who will never know you, never know of you, never know the real reason you faced the dragon, the iron horse. Was it worth it? Was it worth the 9mm migraine? Did they send your mother the bill for the bullet that killed you? Or did they kill her, too, for producing such a traitorous seed. Stand alone before the onslaught of terrible hate that lives in cowardly men who are “just following orders” by running over an unarmed man who wants to go home to his family, the same as the poor soldier driving the tank wants to go home to his. Orders to run you beneath the treads of the steel beast, that monster of modern man, the efficient and inhuman killing machine. Scared, were you? Did you cry, did you scream, did you piss your pants? Did you know that they would come for you as soon as the cameras stopped rolling? Could you not have known? But you know that now. And still, knowing it, would you have dared to repeat your daring - foolhardy? - task? Or would you hide - and live. You outmaneuvered brute strength with guile and cunning. Turns out, you needed more than a buckler of faith to save you from the machine. Do you think they sing songs about you? Or is your name whispered in the circles of traitors and revolutionaries? Did the sound of your own heartbeat drown out the rumble and thunder of your doom? In the pictures, you look so calm and assured.