This city is at once a labyrinth and a heart, and its clogged arteries pump tirelessly while we pump more petrol, tired and disoriented, navigating its chambers to get to where we are neither wanted nor really needed.
Where we ourselves don’t want to go.
Our clothes are made of plastic, of a chemically-treated black goo that was once a clump of dead cells, which has become more essential to our myopic game of Monopoly than gold. More expensive too.
So are our homes, our cars, even our amulets and talismans - all of them rendered toxic, all of them filling our organs with tiny specs of plastic sand.
Gold used to be our God, its shimmering glow mirroring that of the Sun's, its warm luster reminiscent of its life-bestowing rays; of fruitful springs, and of plentiful harvests.
We used to adorn our kings and queens with wreaths and symbolic trinkets fashioned from it, so that we could bask in their glory while they ruled over us.
But our kings and queens are anonymous now, and they rule over us by turning our base instincts against us. They require neither gold, nor the use of such straightforward symbolism.
As for us - we take part in neither the sowing or the harvest now, only in the imbibing.
And one day soon, we’ll have swallowed this whole place up.
Bon appétit, black-hole sons and daughters.
There is a city beneath this city -
a hum that pulses underneath the muck.
While feathers churn above the concrete,
below, a pair of closed eyes looks up.
A cloak enshrouds the unbeholder,
yet the shivers find their way aground.
As he listens to the ripples in the mortar,
for the inner empire he is bound.
