Little green men

No one knew what to do when the ship crashed 

and the crew,

all little green men, 

came running out 

shrieking and squealing,

looking like drunk children as they howled at the sky,

desperately trying to communicate,

begging for help,

for someone to do anything to save them

from burning to death.

But that isn’t the way here.

I remember watching on the news as armies moved in.

Instead of offering help,

the little green men were taken away. 

Those who survived, they weren’t helped for their benefit.

They were locked up,

tested

experimented upon

like they weren’t real,

like they didn’t hold a shred of essence or soul,

just some new test subjects 

to poke and prod.

World governments felt so 

righteous

and full of themselves,

claiming they’d held back an alien invasion,

which wasn’t what anyone saw.

What everyone saw were frightened beings

running from a burning ship,

terrified of what they saw,

begging for things to be another way,

begging for their world to be how it used to be,

begging for reality to be anything but reality.

All those proud men and women in their suits

and in their uniforms

with their pitch perfect voices,

their polished words,

their messages coming across as

just-so;

they all stood at pulpits and altars

raving about their own virtues,

and so busy fawning and gawking over themselves

they didn’t notice when the second ship landed.

And it was not full of little green men looking for help.

It was full of those who’d seen 

their friends, relatives, colleagues, and lovers locked up,

electrocuted,

burned,

poisoned,

tormented,

deprived of sleep and food,

all used in the name of science.

They were not happy.

They were full of fire and fury, 

and human hubris was never more on display

than in the look of surprise on the faces of

all those stuffed shirts.

Where so many had wailed and moaned about the

resilience of humankind,

the never-lay-down attitude and the virtues of

seeing-it-all-through, how it had all buffered against invasion.

None of that mattered.

The second ship brought about retribution

and the last look of hypocritical surprise.