Seen on the side of a highway in South Jersey: a group of ninjas paying their respects to a fallen comrade. A small ninja mournfully twirling small nunchucks. Another (priest?) holding a bible or its martial arts equivalent. Two setting themselves on fire, rolling to put it out in synchronized sad motion.
Let no ninja fight on this day; let no wall be climbed. Let none defy gravity; nor no individual shoot lasers from her or his eyes. In the secret outpost the reading torch has gone out and no one bats an eye. There's one I know who usually tells jokes; today he's got nothing to say and when you rouse him he just wants to point out that death takes each man but why this man now? Why is death selective?
Leave the graveyard razed and burning to the ground; it wasn't on purpose so much as fallout from a stop drop and roll gone wrong. Tomorrow there'll be another funeral; soon the ninjati may only live in memory, the stuff of faded, forgotten myth.
I knew it had gotten bad, but I had no idea it had gotten this bad.
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