Sisyphus Incarnate

Marc Perez

Downhill momentum.

Meshing minds in Chaos.

Such begets helter-skelter energy

roiling like shreds of flapping plastic tarp

red ones

blue

white

mud-caked

blood-soaked

effigy smoked

seedlings all.

Victimizations grow victims

knowing long chains of iron or thorn

can never bind tight

without the first link locking.

Claiming bias neutral,

as if enabling is life’s free pass

begetting saplings diseased

infecting institutional buildings to despair

governing order into collapse.

Anger lashes out.

Anger lashes in.

Brick of principals… crumbles.

Metal of order… rusts.

Time normally in gradual transit… jettisoned.

Like our non-sentient feathered and scaled friends,

survival choices are fraught with both physical and mental peril.

Corridors of growth and passage

change reality from rock to sand,

inviting spore and weed,

anxious mind-scapes crash,

both innocence and guilt alike.

Downhill momentum increases.

Humanity's desperation,

like congregating tumbleweed,

huddle,

wait,

while choices made-for,

some made-by,

continue forging this precarious determination

from sprouting to full bloom.

Some of growth’s exposure collapse behind

like sprouting seeds choked of tears,

finding solace behind life's gardening sheds,

among plow blades mixed with orange safety cones,

piles without order,

without care.

Momentum picks up.

Covetous of outlaw freedom

corruptness crowds wildflowers and dust

into gasping lifeless air of tangled strangulation

below razor wire enforced eight-foot fences

with abutments of concrete,

becoming one with the great out-of-control,

swirling winds of drought,

depression's storm.

All while life’s utility boxes corrode.

At night

lifeless used car lots

become yesterday's syndrome of want over needs,

mobility once entertainment of smiles,

now but vinyl flags without wind,

faded color,

becoming black and white,

with nary a glint or flash

from lights gone dead.

Down the shadowed road

family SUVs and Harleys,

once sparkling of waxing pride,

now fill dirt lots of roadside rest,

meadowed among cattails and fledgling nests,

as anxious famine claims orphan lands.

Such is the possibility of a people-less paradigm

A country of Sisyphus Incarnate?

To be unprepared to love,

not hate,

is unforgivable.

Odin Roark