journal excerpt | Sniper Joe
After Sniper Joe and his compatriots abandoned their master, Mega Man made his assault on the city. Upon discovering Bomb Man’s ruined body, Joe regards, and perhaps laments, his fallen lord.
“When I scoured the remains I found my lord profaned, left broken in his lair, undone, beyond repair | I knelt beside him there | I reached inside his cloak where his notes were kept, concealed within his armament | and suddenly he gasped, lackwit to the last, ‘the empire endures, we met the master’s thirst! Our courage honors him!’ | with that his body parted to reveal the cache of death a fool would wield | for his was not the noble cause | but a parapet for a cult of death | in a heightened state he fabricated a paradise out of air and sky | and his notes were less than I’d expected | just vacant lines from a vacant mind | clearly power-mad but a lonely man | he’d become his master’s ‘son’ | and I’m not without sympathy for crowns but by gifts one makes slaves and by whips make hounds | for how does one depart from one’s own, from one’s heart? how does one object to another’s bond when oneself subject? then have we naught but to run, or be undone? and here, at the end we’ve become, become as one, become undone?”
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Fellow Celebrants 