alienation

I left a place of sun and green
the fields of wheat were golden
sky and earth on the horizon meet
since when the earth still smoldered

 

the labor of the soil is hard
but we are soil into soil we’ll turn
terracotta sculptures that live and die
who from the soil eat and learn

 

I’d heard there is a city where
we eat and learn from the concrete
where people eat what they have learned
from all the billboards off the street

 

I wondered what’s out there for me
what color is the sky
what air one breaths into the chest
and what shape has one’s life

 

the shape I found out soon enough
breath after breath of noxious air
no longer had I had to wonder
the sky was grey dirty and pale

 

awaited was I by the fate
obscure to me it was which one
had I had known what the worst was
I’d have had it read on my palm

 

In the beginning wasn’t bad
I felt I could adapt
adapt I did and for some time
I thought I would be apt

 

the weariness is building up
eating away my aptitude
making me question what brought me
all the way to this latitude

 

a cruel clock tells me it’s time
to stand up and go see
the man who daily tells me ‘work!’
I obey for a fee

 

this is the shape of my life now
it’s not what I had hoped for
the more time flows the more I wish
to go back to before

 

but time doesn’t pass in this place
and weights upon my chest
the clockwork pushes down on me
pressure builds up when one is pressed

 

I want to be back on the field
where sunlight pours onto my face
and the wind carries recollections
of the home I had in that place

 

July 2023