Walking Sticks

Our subconscious bristles of sabotage, ankles deep in the tar pits

This media detritus smothering us terribly, as this humidity does

Cultural hypnosis, everywhere we look, on the loci, we lose focus

Never touch the subway pole, cause its covered in mania and regret

Hand sanitizer; don’t ever, take the crazy off our hands, so stop smearing it

All these, drugged eyes, peering past us, into a faraway-faux-land-in-the-background

Been to every crevice in our minds, every new advance, a new way to waste time

Satisfied, with a lick of the affluence, at least we can smell the cornucopia

The road seldom traveled, is filled with hitchhikers, with walking sticks

Food prices skyrocketing, trying to water our optimism with drool

Why build the passages, traveled by only the mute fools of conceit

Clasped in the Paw of a Future Rat

I remember that I have

always been good at finding these

Large crowds, which march

with banner and hands aloft

I always find life in the chants

Defiance was my first toy

Lately, everything is poison,

which I find leaves little to desire

Everything tastes

like this 

quiet and silent death

My pillow is a ventriloquist

for almost dead people

Or at least an evil fuck

What about the living things,

which can’t find me

within this concrete and steel?

I stand, as usual,

on the other side of the valley,

just out of earshot of my totem

Where I am one of the

self-appointed rangers

of the urban sprawl

Lean on the illusionary walls

My tool belt is,

well worn and faded

With dry spatter

of everyone's blood

While feeling this weariness

of assisting in the erection 

of these complex conduits

Among the diligence

of maintenance of the foundation

I found our future

clasped in the paws of

the city rats

Which, when I unrolled,

each said, nothing memorable

Only a time capsuled narcissism

of egotistical nostalgia

Each had a detailed picture

drawn of a 

empty face

With the underlined word

"ME"

scrawled in pencil underneath

When driving pillars

for the next corridor

I met a future rat

Who had a encrypted note

in his paw that I 

can't read, but at least

I know in the future

There are still rats

who use the channels

We built by our hands