One By One

They stood there with their noses in the dirt
They huddled like hogs, with vacant looks on their faces
They rooted through their lives like pigs in the yard

They picked at their pimples
They poked at their butt-holes
They stuffed their faces with garbage

They drove their toy cars
They watched their toy TVs
They played with their toy guns

They doodled
They diddled
They piddled around

They argued
They fretted
They worried about nothing

They watched the news
They ignored the news
They acted like the news was not them

They let themselves soil their world
They let themselves become dumb to their world
They let themselves become the killers of their world

They denied everything
They allowed everything
They contributed to everything

Then one day...

One of the hogs stood up and became a man
He looked around at the backs of all the other pigs
He raised one arm and started to speak in a very loud voice:

"Hey, you root hogs!" "Stand up, you pigs!" "Become human again!"
"Look at me!" "I'm standing here!" "I'm not really a pig!" "I'm standing!"
"We don't have to be hogs!" "We can stand up!" We can walk upright!"

All the other hogs just ignored him
They all went about the business of busily rooting
They were too busy snorting to hear what he tried to say to them

So he bent back over and resumed rooting and snorting like all the rest
And they all kept clumsily moving towards something they could not see
Something that they could have seen, if they had raised their heads and stood up

But...

They didn't raise their heads
And they didn't stand up
And when they reached the edge
They all quietly tumbled over, one by one