Retreat to Elysium

Disgusted by the horrors of progress,

observing the shining city on the hill

with new eyes and heavy hearts, compelled by concern

for the preservation of their own intuition,

a gut sensation of moral certitude,

and shaken from modernity’s convenient stupor

by a thunderclap in the zeitgeist,

(had anyone else heard it?)

they sought refuge in older ways of being,

fueled by mistrust of Judas tyrants and snake oil magic,

tired of being told to do as they were told,

no questions or second guesses of naked contradiction,

of being made to accrue the guilt of toeing the lie.

A heavy price, a heavier burden, to pay for suffocating safety.

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But compliance carried a cost all its own,

the world shrank anyway regardless,

fettered in four walls, prisons for homes,

and homes for prisons, no difference when

the seppuku knife of isolation is found sharp

when buried in your own bared belly,

made ready to accept the compliant strike.

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Alone on this precipice with nothing to do

but nurture an anxious and introspective squint,

gradually contorted if only to see something different.

The looking glass of mad consensus cracked,

under the pressure of an epiphanic question:

What’s the point of life if there’s no living?

The answer coaxed a timid taste, to savor a little danger,

a long lost volition found only in transgression,

the contrarian’s dream, the rebel’s prayer,

for such a time as these when the impish

and unruly may boast of such sweet justice.

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Their melpomene faces timidly changed

revealing real eyes and liberating voices

to greet each other with skeptical elation.

Words like “Hello” and “I love you”

took on the timbre of treason,

a friendly rebellion of restoration

vaguely borrowed from a childhood forgotten.

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“Unless ye become as a child,” a recollection

from some forgotten place of disregarded “myth”,

its appeal strangely compelling, convincing,

simplicity the cornerstone of its beguiling mystery.

Cursed was the day that its spell had first been broken,

its magic rendered forfeit, conceding to the cold promethean

flame of reason, a terrible torch that consumed the world,

now a cadaver carved up with a mortician’s barren blade,

and callously divided by the iron laws of tyranny and trade.

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Why did anyone trust our mercenary masters,

the worldly princes, the merchants of the earth,

who neither practice what they preach,

nor use what they produce?

(“Rules for thee,” --isn’t that the phrase?)

One wonders if we really even exist to them,

Or are we just a counted among the chattel

as collateral for their boundless dominion?

Who knew that the despoiled land would tremble

at the sight of its own deflowered fields,

or that what remains wasn’t worth having

once wonder was forgotten?

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Well, some decided to depart the whole charade,

--what did it matter if their part in the play was getting cut anyway, --

and live a life apart from all the noise of everyday,

becoming overnight, autodidactic babushkas

growing gardens on suburban quarter acres.

Who would have believed that the road to Elysium

was paved with humble dirt?