A single strand of simple, unsophisticated smoke smoldered silently upward;
spiraling simperingly into a sunlit bed of stagnant smog. Within the soft, sleeping
blanket of cloudy gray haze the tiny string of sporadic steam tangled and twined,
wisped and wound; embedding itself as if a drifting, dying feather on a succulent,
shimmering sea.
Like a dejected demon thrust out of a hallucinogenic hades for behaving too well, the
docile dustcloud inched steadily upward above the mauling maw of a monstrous
metropolis. Altering it's formless shape fluently, it wriggled like a worm on a hook;
ascending through a heaven of mischievous man made cloud like a tired orator drifting
exhaustedly into a recuperative slumber at his microphone. As it left the sullen
spectacle of the crestfallen city scape far below, every jeering tower and office block
muttered and cursed a pretentious commercial gospel as if the outlandish oath of a
barbaric homosapien tribe. An idyllic ideal made the morphological masses flock into this
torn and twisted metropolis centuries ago; all of them convinced that of the malevolent
horde it would be them who would find some salvation here. Imprinting its odious
message onto their hearts and souls like a sizzling iron scorching skin and sinew, the
dubious promise of prosperity had carved its way into being like a blunted blade into
the meek flesh of a sacrificial lamb. A doctrine of dread spread as if regimented into
haphazard pincer groups like a cluster of countless blood crazed vultures over a pit of
molding bones; weaving a wangling web around its victims which would hold them for
life under its persuasive spell. Standing squarely in the horrified heart of a hedonistic
hegemony, a symbolic reaper howled in disobliging delight; it's space black cloak dyed
in industrial winds; it's arcane scythe rusted and overworked. A million souls
screaming in insomniatic indignity deep within it's pitlike belly; trapped by glorious
guarantees which the corrosive chloroform of capitalism could never deliver.
Wealth resided not in the hands of the naive plenty, but the notorious few. New,
ignoble motivations had been crafted in the merciless mold of a crippled society
lacking consumer constraint; casting aside the decadent delectabilities of duty to
oneself and one's fellow man in favor of a tricky conundrum of self serving sacrilege; a
place of misbegotten intentions and unrealizable dreams.
The earth's grieving guardsman; the wily, weeping sun hang chained and
tortured somewhere within the fervent festoon of false suns which shrieked for
attention as the stately star sobbed at the bitter brutality it's subjects habitually
inflicted on themselves and tossed a toxic tear into a once prosperous, innocent plain
now a bedraggled, battered, baron land of stoical suffering and timeless turmoil; a
bastion of animalistic conquest; a shrine to chaos. Suffocated by the oily, clogging
smog storm thrown up by a deceitful industrial regime, the paternal god; as he
observed from on high; did nothing as the grotesque plague of strident self service
swept through the city like a baneful breeze; biting and slicing the honest aspirations
of those who had twisted the supposed motivations of that irresistible welcome as if a
decadent dagger bearing private plunged into war against a pacifist foe. Both the
incarcerated and the outcast danced a gleeful, guilty jig as if a choreographed
company in a slithering street parade as the smothering serpent of anarchic agony
whipped itself around the doomed utopia in a loveless stranglehold. It grasped it's
lifeless prize as the sun gave up and moved on to salvageable places; it's fiery head
moping in regret. Greed and desire are the root of all ills; to want and to take. Only the
realization that a human being even at birth has all that he will ever require could
qualify to curtail a carnivorous culture which would motivate man to consume
continually until inevitably he would consume himself.
Despite a profane plethora of recorded history; despite technological
advancement, political upheaval and social progression, nothing had happened in a
thousand years. Humanity had been stuck in an endless circular dance; a crazy congo
around its own grave. It was a world of stereotypes; of predictablilities; but then,
people liked predictability; it made them feel safe; safe from change; the universe's
only constant. They liked to gawk in front of mindless soaps on TV never the least bit
surprised by ridiculous plot twists. They liked to go to a fast food outlet any day of the
week, anywhere in the country and get exactly the same burger every time. They liked
to go on vacation to places just like home; to shop for the same goods in a different
state; a different time zone; even a different continent. They liked to go to work every
day knowing exactly what would transpire between nine and five so accurately before it
happened that they could do the job with their eyes shut. They didn't like to use their
senses; their brains; because it took too much effort. They demanded life on a plate
because that's the way they liked it. Most people were content to do what was
expected and nothing more; to play their parts.
But others asked that question. they felt uncomfortable; distanced from the
flock. They felt they were not utilizing their full abilities. They were not satisfied to
wallow in the mundane as if it really mattered. They asked if there was something
more.
Such people transcend; grow beyond the sum of their parts; break through the
roles they had always been told they had been allocated. They may well have a fate; a
fate predetermined by convention. They may well have a place; chosen through a strict
system of hierarchy. They may even have a character to play; a script to follow. But
some people are uneasy with the story; they improvise. They question their reality;
they doubt it. They are not convinced by this world and yearn for answers to questions
most people would be too idly busy to pose. They rip up the script and toss it back into
the director's face. They are troubled, pained, lost and constrained in and by this
world, but they are the only ones who can ever hope to know what it is to be free.
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