Born to bloodshot eyes and sleepless nights
where each breath breaks the spirit
in the bonds that bind the heart like
beating chains around its wrists,
Shuffle forward for the
two-step marching duty dance of death
and every footfall is an echo
from the metronome of life;

Human limbs are spokes in wagon wheels
that turn upon the axis
of this floating chunk of nightmare
in a dream called outer space,
Where the blade of pending futures
shears the silken thread of time
that tethers memories of better lives
to disillusioned souls;

On this escalator standing
in a caravan procession with our
hopes and dreams as lifeless
broken shards upon the floor,
While a hungry child holds
a fork that pokes at empty plates
and waits to stop the moving stairs,
he jams the fork into its gears;

When the moneyed men withhold
the dreams of others for their own
then lidded eyes might leave them blinded
as the slaves of lonesome slumber,
But to those that drown each day
within the sweat of labor’s toil
goes the self respect of knowing
what you own is what you earned.