The Watchman Who Sold Ashes

A bunch of naive villagers 

with apologies for existences and ignorances for egos 

hired a watchman once —

not because he was wise,

not because he was brave,

but because he barked the loudest

He was given a stick, a uniform stitched from borrowed pride,

and a podium higher than the village roofs

And with it, a promise that read: "I will protect you"

And for a while, he did

He slapped the daylight out of a few petty thieves,

chased the inebriaty out of some drunken low lives,

posed in front of temples like an accidental prophet

Until his hands itched for more

So he lit a fire at the edge of the village

Just a little one —

small enough to scare,

small enough to seem natural, not an incitement planned out in cold blood

"An enemy!" he cried

"Look, look! They’re here to destroy us!"

The villagers panicked, scared shitless out their brainless cavities for grey matter

The watchman told them they needed to pray harder, pay more taxes

And as they knelt and knelt until their knees bruised and paid and paid until their pockets emptied out

The watchman watched it all, smiling wryly behind his whistle

But fear is addictive

And addictions are expensive

Soon, he needed bigger fires —

fires that devoured homes and the families in them,

fires that turned next-door neighbours into sworn enemies,

fires that taught full-grown adults to forget the one bare essential: common sense

And every time the fires died down,

he sold the villagers their own ashes

wrapped in plastic bags smelling of blood, sweat and piss, labeled "loyalty"

"Ash for your wounds!" he yelled.

"Ash for your broken dreams!"

"Ash for your forgiveness, your history, your dead gods!"

The villagers rid of their common senses 

and riddled in freshly rented faith systems

bought the lies like daylight truths

Paid in variable currencies: from dignity to integrity to ransoms to sons hired for wars never meant to end

Meanwhile, the watchman grew richer, fatter, louder, 

until even his lies needed chauffeurs

When the granaries emptied,

he blamed the strangers no one had ever seen

When the fields turned barren,

he blamed the ghosts of an archaic past

And when someone dared whisper, "Maybe it's the watchman..."

he built a fire so big,

the smoke swallowed the question whole

Now, the villagers live inside the smoke

They breathe it like oxygen,

wear it like second skin,

feed it to their children like ancestral wisdom

And the watchman

He sells the ashes back to them every morning,

while they chant his name through their cancerous coughs