The End of Free Flight

Clean-shaven and pressed between cologne and suit fabric,

Thin as a rail and elegant as a sharpened sword, a metal stick,

He stands in the middle of a glass elevator going up to a bleak sky

Full of exploding bombs and the degrading promises that the high

Would take away the unrelenting, pounding hunger in his blood.

.

Nestled under the bones of his breast, deep in the cavity of his chest,

A haunting cry turns into a wailing plea, begging to find some kind of rest.

There is no rest for the wicked and there is nothing for the apathetic,

Not a crumb, not a drop, just the burning smoke of a waxless wick.

Look at the put-together man bleeding out on the marble steps.

.

The Great wax and wane at a faster pace than the poor sucking the marrow

Out of their bones, hunting for poisonous seeds they can sow.

They angle for the destruction, the bloodshed, the violence of poverty.

It is a balm and a blanket to festering wounds of the thought of an eternity

That will worship them, these paupers, like they worship chaos.

.

He cannot breathe not even with the luxuries afforded to him.

The glass elevator lets the light in but the flickering lights have gone dim.

Lightless eyes spark with the bombs of his terror, the ones erupting

Throughout the sky like the dishes Mother threw as she took up acting

And pretended that the child of her womb was some sort of anomaly.

.

He was as much of an anomaly as the star born of destruction and dust,

As odd as a beaten-up car gathering a nice coat of winter rust.

The man with golden chains and tin dreams is as strange

As the billowing black storm rolling in with its lies of harmonious change.

He is the metal in the field begging and beckoning the lightning.

.

The skeleton tucked away underneath his aspirations is frail.

It yearns for the stillness that perfect silence can trail

For eons in its wake but he is trapped in the prison of the obsolete,

The otiose climb to a peak that moves ever further from the elite.

There was a day once where he was promised summiting meant rest.

.

It was one of those cheap candy lies manufactured by warmongering

Priests and Kings and Mothers who would rather wring

The lies out of pretty little truths than craft something new.

Look, look at him stumble to the glass and gasp as he goes blue

Around the lips from the deprivation his hope has forced.

.

Hope is not a light thing that floats through the air or glitters in moonlight.

It is a shackle around the throat, the thing to end free flight.

There is terror blooming inside his old hope and it wraps its hands

So easily around this man's throat, squeezes until red bands

Rise along his skin, betraying the imprisonment that always existed.

.

The breath is fluttery in his lungs like the failing wings of a dying bird.

So too is his heart fumbling and his thoughts cannot form a single word.

The elevator rumbles and groans as it finally comes to a halt

But there is nothing to save now just a man coated in tears, sweat, salt.

His wings have been ripped like the hope right from his flesh and bones.

.

The flight of his freedom fuelled by the dream of tomorrow has died

And it suddenly occurs to him the someone, somewhere has lied.

Gauze wraps around his temples, presses against his bleeding eyes,

But bloody tears still gather and drip down his chest as he cries

Because to die in silence is to never say goodbye.