A Humanist Poem

I sit watching the clouds.
Laughing at the melancholy absurdity of life,
Sepulchral visions fill my mind of my future fate.
Oh what silly creatures are we,
That exist as mere flickers and for a short while.
Live each moment,
For there will not be another.

Men Assault Woman and Carve Message in her Flesh

I can't bring up the words to describe this. For that reason, I'll quote a news story from gawker.com:

According to the victim, three masked men broke into her home yesterday morning and tied her up with zip ties. They then proceeded to carve the word "dyke" into her skin and spray painted "we found u dyke" on her basement wall.
"They put gasoline on the floor and they lit the match. I think the intent was to burn her," said close friend Erin Thompson. "Then they left and she managed to get out. She was still bound, so she was crawling on her hands and knees, and she got out the back door."
The unnamed woman, who was naked and bleeding, managed to make her way to her to the home of neighbor Linda Rappl. "I was in shock," Rappl told CNN. "She was naked, her hands were tied with zip ties. All I could see was a cut across her forehead and blood running down.

It really, really upsets me that someone brought together a plan to bring this to fruition. That they must have planned for quite a while in order to execute this. That no part of their being told them to stop. The kind of dehumanisation of another person that this involves is chilling.

Because I cannot muster the words to describe this, I will simply quote Sarah Hamilton's Facebook status, which originally brought this incident to my attention:

Hey, so. Let's suspend all opinions and debate over gay marriage for one second, because this greatly transcends the issue. If anyone on my list thinks it's okay to treat someone like this or wants to try and justify it, please just...go. I won't make a fuss, I won't yell at you...just, leave my friends list now. This is unspeakably awful. This is not okay. This is the anti-okay. This makes me so angry. This is not how we treat our fellow human beings.