Ahh... I'm starting to feel more devious already. Nice to see this place again. In the next few weeks I will start branching out and seeing what everyone has been up to. For now I think I'll stay rooted here and, in the meantime, root out a few of the scattered bits of writing that may soon find their way shaping up for public dissemination. Pity the poor souls who end up absorbing all this petty, poetic propaganda >

Getting to the point, however, here are a few thoughts I've had on death recently...
Human sacrifice had long been a powerful tool of the state. The thirsty sun gods needed their daily draught and the greedy overlords needed their subservient population. These times are long gone, but when have their greedy gods ever gone unsated in the centuries since? Surely they've had their fair share of human suffering to feast upon... but how many have simply ceased to be in cowardly, unconscionable works of fire, and with their dissolution, so the life bestowing waters, the flesh bestowing flesh. How many linger yet in silence, in boxes pine and plastic? What image of the afterworld are we creating... what private hells? In our ever "sensitive" (read, fearful) approach to our final resting place, how many great cycles, unbroken since the dawn of this infant species, has our fear-minded meddling unhinged?
Death ceases to be one with life when flesh does not feed flesh.
War ceases to be war when blood is not payed for in blood.
Again, pardon these morbid meanderings... These things consume that do not find egress.