Carry On You

Another poem

“Time has a way of staying stuck in place.”
A phrase that hits me just before the dawn
Signals coffee as reward for waking.
There’s no escape from this ouroboros,
Twisting passages that all look the same.
Can’t escape the twentieth century, 
It just goes on and on and on and on
It must go on and on and on and on . . .

In school they told me nothing gets better,
This was the be all end all of the world.
Forget European capitals and
Far eastern markets, churches crowned with gold,
The peoples who gave us philosophies,
Symphonies. Forget them, we’ve got burgers. 
Anytime, anywhere, for a few bucks. 
And everyone else is jealous of us. 

Now I’m off to the paper mine again, 
Shuffling files with no canary 
To keep me company and at least sing,
To warn me when the slouching gets too deep,
When the lameness becomes too much to bear,
And I collapse, smiling, silent, staples
Driven into the palms of both my hands. 
It just goes on and on and on and on . . .

There medicine for everything you know,
Every ailment under the sun, and some
Of them are real, imagine that!
Not just pathologized humanity.
I dream of windswept fields, horses, stones,
Women waiting, fates depending on me,
A reason to go and strive for glory.
Now a pill can cure me of this madness

Carry on, you! I swear that you matter
To someone, somewhere
Working on a giant chart.

- Alexander