Steel in Blood

I was told

I am greatness mold,

But volley after volley

I’ve become humanities folly.

I was made to protect,

Now not so much in retrospect.

The sounds of bodies thud

That my hands are stained in their blood.

I was made to serve,

To help the weak,

Protect the meek,

But their bodies are my oeuvre.

I was to be wielded by the virtuous

Not the vindictive.

The power I bear becomes addictive,

An instrument for the torturous.

I’ve made it easy,

We are no longer interacting.

Thinking of a taken life queasy,

They can be in the shadows enacting.

There are those who want me regulated,

They see my true gait.

They see the gruesome acts weighted.

The violence by my hellish fate.

I’ve seen the innocents fall,

From saplings to great elms, all

They don’t deserve to live in the mire,

Especially the cruelty of your spitfire.

I lock myself away, so none pursue,

To keep them guarded.

So on Reaper’s scroll not accrue,

Not on a list that’s discarded.

If I am to be gone

For the world to be better,

Then so be it, I’ll leave by dawn.

I will no longer be death’s love letter.