An unmetered poem of a commoner’s inflated, beat-by-beat outlook of their existence inside the oldest and busiest, walled city in the entire insula.

“For them, life begins and ends in this miniscule bubble. Pilgrims by the thousands are delivered to be nourished within in its shallow umbilicus. By teeth and claw, they live odd and vicarious lives, surpassing the life expectancy of the common houseroach. So below the ivory curtain portrays, thought-provoking creatures imitating self-embellished decay.”

— The Commoner, Circa 2178 AD

One – The Curtain

Each day outside a dumbwaiter-shaped window this one sees it—
A curtain of ivory concrete folding the very heavens into a missive.
Spanning across a collective promise, a monolith of dead dreams.
Coalescing into horrid lorries people dread dear to keep.

This one extends its neck far beyond the joints would allow—
To whistle above a vision of this towering cloud.
This one sells its arm to its evangelical masters—
Palms reaching, ears screeching, never to foster a crypt down under.

From the fray of its battlements, it sheds rayshine in bleached-bone, 
As grey as the skulking bodies below, as swine these bellies in unison groan.
Overflowing as these arteries the curtain conveys, 
Mega-highways and lividus-coloured avenues like labyrinthine branches this city sways.

Furnished with rebar from centuries upon centuries of toil,
Gravel from sinister plots and unholy turmoil,
Soil from graphite bloodclots, admixed and molten in alloy to boil—
Droll, dreary colours drained across the foil of hands uncoiled.

Glow once more dear curtain, for this one wants to see it.
A blinding, ashen-white glimmer fluting towards timid—
Lands below, spiraling sore into the center it creeps.
A pearl encrusted in excrement, entering and exceeding towering fleets.

The curtain thus hides, shields, announces, and encapsulates—
A variety, a lackluster, a trifecta, or the lack rather—
Of a happiness devoid, an empathy undiscovered, a progress abort;
Of wonderful horizons this one knows nothing of the sort.

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Two – The Adolescents

So below the window this one finds them,
Singing ballads, caressing the bottoms of bottles,
Searching clothespins, rearranging the chalk from the ne’er-do-wells.
Young gallants, this one finds itself among them.

Comatose on black milk do these adolescents thrive,
Praising the loving shade of this curtain they make brides and tender wives.
Juxtaposed with jades and their decrepit counterparts do they writhe,
Endless flights to and fro their jalopies and factories alike.

Superfluously they live like hedons and consume like paupers.
Shuffling their feet on alleyways like vagrants they offer—
Another dose, another close—to pinpoint pupils they live the most.
Sniffing the xenon, filling the coffers; pitiful children we have failed to grow.

Always living off the verge of jamais vu,
Attuned, eternally fixated on electronic mirrors astute.
Paper has been decreed weightless, replaced by a motley crew—
Of woe, disparate slew, minced ingeniously with an ingenious lieu.

As gravity creeps the night in careful passado,
It eases the sleep of sonatas playing in this one’s mind.
Ever-crushing the spine into spaces unfit and ill-fortunato,
Sending intelligent traces of wit outside the mouth divide.

With much certainty this one forgets.
This one knows not which sentences to create, which letters to ascribe.
Deliverance and sunsets? Destiny manifest and lies retort?
Of borrowed ideas this one knows nothing of the sort.

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Three – The Abbatoir

Beyond the skyscrapers that rival the ivory curtain seats—
Roaring work-engines in bulk amassing hither and higher.
Created in men’s hubris, a great feat, made in hundred-iron and hulking stone,
These nightmarish machines wash the profits from dirtied fingers and bone.

Surrounding this grandiose fort meets the lines of belfries,
Furnaces belching thunderous steam that fly and sheets the sky least—
Of this brave new world. Grinding in elden morose made burden—
By frivolous unions of workers sullen, scratching their boots underneath.

The abbatoir breathes its pulses past through every solemn nocturne.
Day breaks, and the losses make each labor longer.
By maddening whip and crack, faulty screws and scrap, 
Eyes remain reddening from the salt of tears and sweat together.

At the feet its foyer, joints are intertwined narrow with corrugated steel.
In the endless reels of bruises and blotches that follow the helpless,
Raucous peons walk slower unwilling to take another—
Berth, a slight viand, a small meal; through which all sink closer to the nether.

This titanic hall houses the city’s monument of blind ardor.
Made clean in candor with polished ivory and winestone, it stands—
Erect with its extremities terrorizing those who look upon it with gloam.
Adjacent this edifice, sunken heads fall below the false liberty it grants.

Men and women, child and crone; all souls depart into the abbatoir.
They enter whole in droves, and leave eager in pieces defiled—
Ready once again to stand and die freely into the chopping board.
Of calloused hands this one knows nothing of the sort.

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Four – The Parallel

In the rusted gutters where this one lies awake,
So do the neighbouring cicadas chirp from their slumber.
Rushing in and fluttering out to burrow and hunger—
The nectarine swelter from their brow they thirst each other.

Clinking and drinking, does the rain end on these tired streets?
Perilous flocks of bodies swathe the infesting avenues.
Traffic between the toes, filth in the creeks, blowing smoke nearer and farther,
The afflicted reeking stench oblivious from the sidewalks to the nose.

This one then brushes itself past leaden banners hanging from the ballasts.
Once again the victorious celebrate crass in their vile and cruel en masse.
High-rising spires and ivory chateaus throw the remainder of their luncheons below—
Hands reach out eager and bold; the destitute applaud slow the gods they behold.

The parallel awaits the bystander; separating the black from the white.
It is a partition of classes, where the affluent meets the slight.
Across the avenue, merry men from suits of distinguishing colours—
Substitute the light and the languishing from their lifelong lovers.

It is a curious sight to behold, a phenomena that spans millenia.
Kept within both is the status quo, slept and swept in aphemia.
Neither one crosses the parallel, nor knows one another.
One merely tolerates and bring astow, a difficult peace we all suffer.

Ignoramus one and all, where’s the passion and ember that burns within?
The lashing and the crushing, the blood and its gushing—
Why coincide when these men live their lives in extort?
Of bountiful pockets this one knows nothing of the sort.