Elegy of the Dead Worker

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.