Underneath Your Steps

Those who live the buried life
Move on to buried death
For, the second you are born
they make you small
like a toad in boiling water
you won’t feel it at all

the news won’t even tell you
half of the chore
in fact, just yesterday,
the king proclaimed war
they tell you it’s something
you should advocate for
but they make sure to never show you
the corpses and the gore

and often, in the world’s most crowded streets
the people who are walking can feel something underneath
their steps. They wonder
« What purpose are they for ? »
rarely, you’ll see them stop to think ;
then walk a little more

sometimes in another's eyes,
we can read clear
what is being said when
the world has deafened ear
slowly, numbly, after stopping short the chase,
a glow of rest plays upon the face

an unwilling calm pervades the pounding winded breast
paired with the imagined knowledge that one’s aware
of just where he is
and just where he goes,
but for the sake if reality,
in the buried life,
no one ever knows