Stanza

One day you’re going to wake up and find
the person you once were has died, and
nobody has any reason to remember your
smile. And they may say that all young people
are the same – dumb and drunk and erroneously safe
and secure – but youth is a sore thing to miss.
You’ve finally found a home – it’s just like any other,
but you’ve convinced yourself it’s different in
every conceivable way, and the sprawling suburbs
will not consume you. Oh, today you woke up
without a reason to die; it’s a new sensation and it
doesn’t align – you’ve no reason to live and satisfaction
burns an ugly hole. You’re just a cog in the social machine.

One day you’re going to wake up and find the person
you are has died. Your name – ancient and ill-fitting
has lost all semblance of identity, and you stain the
porcelain with your personality. You want someone
to love you, but you’ll settle for tolerance and warmth
in the winter. Oh, the drink and drugs no longer calm the
cravings - the fear and the bilge grow as days melt into
millennia. Solipsism thrives in depravation and depravity;
you’ve lost your balance and hope. They may say that this
lacks story or verse, but perhaps that’s the point – and clockwork
dogs don’t chose to bark, and they don’t care if the moon rises again.
Hell, you’re still alive and you want to love and laugh and learn;
you want a sense of self, but that doesn’t matter – the social
machine drones on as the cogs are reduced to dust.