Baked into the layers of

life,

we are

caught and held

in stripes –

graveyard troughs,

cesspits of the poor,

wealthy smog,

golden belief.

 

Elevated and windowed

from Lowry crowds,

and noise,

and disease,

our brains are still peopled,

the silence still pocked:

 

we are bruised weight,

abused,

dragged through despair and

strangled

in strings of stress,

knotted in nets.

We have been gouged

and patched.

Infected.

 

Confined, we crane;

where is the clean air,

the escape?

 

They exist beyond prepositions.

 

We spew hatred.

We swallow hatred.

We light candles for ambience

and burn our world.

We rock

in a cradle of nonchalance

and cry when it tips.

 

We must clear the film,

rise from the dark architecture,

scarred by the sharp,

and still bleeding.

We must rise

through the pink dilution,

swilled in the watery blood

of morality and emotion.

Rise

to the sharp intake of clarity.

 

Don’t look down, or you’ll fall.