The Burden of the Sane: Notes from the Age of Compliance

We wake before the light arrives, Not dawn, but something staged, The clock declares the hour as real, Yet the body feels confined. We dress and move to take our place Beneath a borrowed sky, And learn before the day begins Which truths we must deny. No iron binds the wrist or throat, No warder guards the door, Yet something tightens, notch by notch, More certain than before. It does not bruise, it does not bleed, It leaves no mark to prove, Except the grim compliance found In everything we do. The lights hum low and never die, The dark is never whole, A thousand windows flicker blue And substitute the soul. We scroll through polished ghosts, A life confined to frames, While something sacred disappears Behind the human face. We practice small submissions, The nod, the tempered tone, The careful check of many thoughts We fear to call our own. The ones who speak without the veil Are marked and set aside, Not feared for what they do, But for what they will not hide. No scaffold splits the public square, No sentence rings aloud, Yet silence serves the very same Beneath a docile crowd. And those who feel too much withdraw Or stand at silent odds, Not broken, yet unwilling still To bow to lesser gods. Something in them will not yield, Though everything is tried, A knowing none can truly teach Yet will not be denied. What strange affliction, then, to see A world that has gone mad? What sickness lies in naming loss For all we truly have? If order asks that we lose The core of what is true, Then let it keep its fragile peace, We know what we hold to. So mark the ones who do not yield Though standing set apart, Who guard beneath the weight of things An uncorrupted heart. For though they walk through fractured days Where hollow kingdoms gleam, They are the final witnesses To all we might have been.