mistakes follow
the circle of life
as if they go hand in hand.
with the sins of the past 
weighing upon us, invisible
as we walk the divides that had
already been dug for centuries
and centuries before.

and there's nothing more
sickening than hearing 
the echoes of every stumble
behind us overwhelm
our footsteps.

in 1920, the president of the United States said that people
didn't have to wear masks during the Spanish Flu pandemic.

humanity should have
the wealth of knowledge.
or to be more precise,
the knowledge
of the lack of knowledge
to bury the past before it
rears its ugly head.

in 2020, the president of the United States said that
it wasn't mandatory to wear masks during the coronavirus pandemic.

yet again, treading the path
to oblivion.
a small inconvenience 
— a mere cloth
covering your face—
and it has become an act
of snatching away rights. 
when the virus snatches away lives.

small lies and they have become conspiracies, breeding layers 
amd layers of mistruths as the
human fall prey. fall prey again
and again and again, discarding
the only two weapons they have 
against the ugliness that pervades us—

their hearts and their minds.

walking robots, slaves to the
growing groups of loyally-served
lies. another mistake peeks out from
the grounds. it's like the city Troy, 
but with a façade: city after city of wrongdoings gets trodden upon,

with some hope that they'll disappear.

and another city rises from the ashes, bleak-grey and dead-red.

another city ridden with falsehood.