they’ve got me running in circles again,
spinning round the old mouse wheel,
lunging for scraps
and we retire at 70 now
with no time left at all
and it feels as if
the world has spun
completely out of control.
little houses for millions of dollars,
fortune-busting interminable educations
that lead to no jobs,
to mcdonalds and fat-choked arteries
because the rent is due this week.
i sit here and read
the job postings on the internet,
all the digital madness,
all the arcane terminology and technology
that no one could possibly understand
(or would ever want to were they sane),
and reflect on what it must have
been like
to live like a real living being
in a jungle or a forest
all those millions
of years ago,
to do things that made sense,
to hunt when hungry
and sleep when tired,
and to die when the time came
instead of being stretched thin
to such obscene degrees.
and we jump through these hoops
because we don’t know
what else to do,
we are scared
and don’t know
any way out,
some of us drink
and some of us turn to stone
and some of us have families
and some of us go mad
and learn to love what tortures us.
they throw us crumbs
to pay the utility bills
and we keep churning along,
day after day after day
until in a heartbeat
20 years have gone by
and the muscles and joints are aching
and the mind is fading
and the rest is crying right along.
and cnn blares in the background
and traffic lights go green and red
and the holidays come and go,
the endless cacophony of a few
billion choking throats,
religion and money and passion
and sex,
the computers blink and run
interference
for the suits
with their fat fingers
in the cookie jars
and it just seems to
get worse and worse
with each passing year.
the freeways are jammed,
the buildings are bursting,
the fields are burned,
there is no room for love,
there is no room for grace or simplicity,
there is only this
diabolical fear of starving
that keeps us chasing carrots,
this fear of drowning
that keeps us afloat.
Scott Taylor hails from Raleigh, North Carolina. He is a writer and a musician, and an avid world traveler. His short stories and poetry have appeared in numerous print and online publications; his debut novel Chasing Your Tail has recently been released with Silver Bow Publishing, and his novellas “Freak” and “Ernie and the Golden Egg” are slated for inclusion in an upcoming anthology with Running Wild Press. He graduated from Cornell University and was also a computer programmer in a past life.
Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson
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