For Want Of A Better World

It was merely a chance occurrence by which we happened to be in that place, at a time of the evening where people who would have a claim to life would be more interested in remembering why they should bother to wake up again next morning. The night was one of the more squalid things about the place, where one of the many degenerates who frequented it could get a fix by sniffing the mushrooms that had started growing in the cracks on the wall, if only they bothered. It's not a surprising coincidence that the drunken lout is not the sharpest tool in the shed. The place was lit by a single light three feet to the left of where it should have been, throwing dull, yellow haze on a chalkboard that held the menu up for inspection, though I doubt many there could read. There was rum, a bit cheaper than you could find anywhere else, even at the liquor store where the old man would give you whatever you wanted from behind his wire mesh cage, as long as it was whisky. There was also '...

Spent, tired across waters unknown, Driven from your old, warm nests, Biting winds, bone-clinging, unyielding snow, This is not your home. Who sent you here, where we live and die? With your head held high you stay in my lands, What do you come as? A raider from the desert, slave to the sand, Where mountains you made dust with the wind in your wings? Ran away from the sun, like A refugee running from war,  With your lands burnt, scorched by someone you knew, Who meant you no harm What did you hope to find so far away, In this stark stretch of cold that never ends? You may want to live, but we preserve This is not that village in the hills, With a green lake in a sea of white banks Where you perch in the temple when the sun goes down, Worshipped like a faceless god by a man of many shapes and a broken heart he hides from you Here, it's cold.