Gears Of War Poem by Wesley Mincin

Gears of War

Gunfire crisscrossed the streets
as missiles soared over the city.
Buildings caved in and crumbled to the ground,
already littered with the bodies of fallen soldiers of both factions.
A paradise
A utopia
Its magnificent buildings now ruins,
tombstones for the dead.
An inferno builds within the heavens and fires down upon the earth.
A final blow
Now a silence deafens the ears of those that survived.
The Gears of War have taught us
the results of pain we cause and take.
The sun breaks through the clouds
and burns away the grey melancholy.
What good is hope when it is abused?
Yet the light does not unveil a beacon of peace.
The light reveals the product of our stupidity.
What good is it, when all you want is life...
but bring about death for it.
We criticize such actions...
only to later gaze into our own reflection
at what we truly are. Who we truly are: to see
that we are not all too different ourselves.
We humans build monuments of beauty,
only to smash them to pieces.
We rule governments that work for peace,
only to destroy others in the process.
And we preach about the love of God,
only to reign down hate for a different belief.
Do we deserve life?
Or do we deserve to suffocate in the smoke and ashes of our sins?
Burn in the fires that we create
and drown in the blood we spill?
Can we learn our lessons from the Gears of War?
The way it works
the price it takes from us...
Can we finally come to an enlightened state of understanding?
Or is it true
that history will always
repeat itself?
The soldiers stand upon the ruins of their city
and look at what's been done.
Sorrow is now a cliche-
they know it all too well.
Now the question finally rises:
Can we learn from our mistakes?
Or die?