From the Screaming of the Gears

The null space behind

what we thought was going

to be our lives, those

strange and dusty storage rooms

outside of time and distance

where we wander for years,

half lost and wondering what

door we went through to get

to such a place,

And there are no mirrors

there to see yourself, what

you have become and how it has

diverged from your dreams,

how you have become a stranger

to yourself, a ragged wanderer

with far-off eyes and a nervous

twitch, ears ringing in the

constant tone of seared nerves

from the screaming of the

gears of the machine we

have driven down into deep

holes in the night

And we walk out into the

dusty last gasp of daylight after

eons in darkness, pallid oddities

unknown and believed to be extinct,

living fossils to those we once knew,

squinting into the sky

we'd half forgotten in our

time as troglodytes, our time

as prisoners in the subterranean

corridors between where we

aspired to be and where we

were,

We, the sinners not yet damned

We, broken but not quite ruined

We, who have survived somehow and come

through the other side of the storm, still

almost us, still almost okay.

Patrick M. Tracy

6/6/17