This city is at once a labyrinth and a heart, and its clogged arteries pump tirelessly as we pump more petrol, tired and disoriented, navigating its chambers to get to where we are neither wanted nor needed.
Where we ourselves don’t want to go.
Our clothes are made of plastic, of a chemically-treated black goo more essential to our myopic game of Monopoly than gold. More expensive too.
So are our homes, our talismans, even our water flasks.
Gold used to be our God, its shimmering glow mirroring that of the Sun, its warm lustre reminiscent of the Sun’s life-bestowing rays. Of fruitful springs and plentiful harvests.
We used to adorn our kings and queens with wreaths and symbolic trinkets fashioned from it, so that we might 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 - no gold needed, no symbolism required.
We do not take part in the harvest anymore, only in the ceaseless imbibing.
And one day, we’ll swallow this whole place up.
Bon appétit, blackhole 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 Inland Empire he is bound.
