A Million Years

The track of dancing lights shone boldly and without reservation
It was programmed by the technician who fought to keep his job
Amidst the pressures of modern-day Rome

Inward were these pressures cast
Bombarding the natural tranquility of his mind
With grotesque and deformed impressions
Of stress and delusion, the result of strain and fractured remedies
That society prescribed to keep the cogs of the machine well-lubricated

There was nowhere to turn, except back to the workday

The assembly line was unjustly wicked, carving out bodies like meat
Every rivet had its place, and the connectors must perform without hesitation
Again and again, without fail

September happenings spoke of the clarity of frosted panes
The cold was creeping in fast, all around
And he knew that he was alone in making it through the night
Watchful wanderers sent the evil eye his way
It was a hall of broken mirrors, deflected light shattering perception

His hands burned of limitless tools, each one primed to do its job
All combining in unison to weather away the quorum of sanity
Slipping into the meticulous pain, the consensus of atrophy turned to stone
Toxic ruminations circled around heretical belief
That there was another way to get through this life

Collective justification enshrined misery
And the altar of sadness appeared before his eyes
It was everywhere that light colonized
A manifest destiny of hypocritical vexation

Whether or not the reality appeared did not matter
For the droves of contractors performed best under veils of deceit

Secondary misfortune
Sleep was in tune with this denial
And restored only the necessary indentations
The integrity of the machine was unsustainable, precisely as designed

Unfit for work, seven undertows claimed passersby who wallowed in halcyon drifting
Expectations that sovereign luck would save them
However, this was merely an apparatus of visual, beleaguered idealism
Succumbed to surrender and usurped for the purpose of additional grief

Steel arms and inlaid sockets fought with furious force against conspirators
Who motioned silently with signals, gesturing defeat
To gain higher ground against the juggernauts of progress
Hieroglyphics volunteered ancient meaning to rattle the cause
But all had been consumed ages ago
And there was nothing left to rectify destiny nor callous friction
Misfortune, tinkering with all of us, finds its way regardless of unified front

Hidden passageways canaled beneath the surface
Like fossils of ancestral effort
Arrows sharper than death
And violently calculated suggestions
Echoing footsteps appealing to the younger folk

So soon to transform
Riddles into epithets
And eulogies unwritten
By a disgusting mind
That conquered entire cities
Without remorse, far along its journey
Toward the stars

Technological evolution heaved constructions
Uniform causeways that furthered the hiatus of reason
Philosophically invalid fallacies, the currency of standard trade

Motioning onward, beneath the salty, dusted plume
The threshold's knee revealed vulnerability
Questions of volcanic debris undermined the cyclops
Whose behemoth yawn swallowing ships sailed
Creating the winds that we know today

All of this said, the seed of majestic correction
Lay buried for a million years unmoved
Futuristic fantasies are the bourgeois commodities
Of speculating teens vaping in the metaverse

What's real is not a fixed proposal
But rather a shifting orb of foggy gradients
Unlocked by the tokens found at a museum

The Nautilus was being constructed
Along the assembly line, but fate would intervene
An older revision of a mechanical part was mixed in inventory
And the tensions placed upon that joint were not qualified for hyperspace

The collapse of a million stars into solitary perspective
Naturally rippled out of control
And stately ceremony was postponed
As the fallout was analyzed and its implications ascertained

Before the antecedent branch had matured
Revolutionaries seized their opportunity
To deal the death blow to capitalistic dogma
And its foregone conclusions
At times of darkest dictatorship
Nihilistic resolve is necessary to restore the absence of a negative

Concrete mistakes are no better than uncertain forecasting
With something to replace it becomes possible to grow and change
But somehow, I suspect that we're not ready for the reigns
We never were, and that is our problem

We cannot stop the march of time, nor should we
But also, we are not prepared for its responsibilities
Compassion is a simple tool, simplistic yet effective
An underrated device that has not been given the chance
To prove its eventual worth, overlooked and forgotten
We all ask, "what is wrong with the world today?"
And do not want to hear a sensible answer

Objectives remain unclear
And vision is limited at best
An avalanche of glacial proportions
The poets spoke of long ago
But they were marginalized and outcast
No one asks the philosopher what he thinks about the disease
Because he is touched by it the most
And outward appearances are all that matter here
So, he is blamed for his own lack of utility
And the Earth, in revolution, sails around the sun
As it will continue to do, once the skyscrapers have all settled
And the vines and ferns have reclaimed the metallic aperture
Of the crimson eye, of humanity's misplaced crusade