Mouse on a Wheel

 A look at the treadmill of work. Most of us are so busy earning a living we have no time to make money and thereby purchase our freedom.

Once fulgent, verdant, fecund fields
Overbuilt these centuries past
Ever growing once flowing
Now car-choked folk
Pedester your disaster
Seeking shelter
Where none is had
Spirits scoured by acid rain

Arteries of asphalt
Canyons of clay
Oven baked to biscuit brick
Concrete corridors
Funnel fools
To where toil and turmoil rules
Demanded, commanded
For paltry payment

Struggle to the weekend
Brief time to borrow
Brief time to spend
The very soul inured, endured
Simply for existence sake
In life-long lunacy
Counting each weekend
Each meagre jolly day, holiday

Smile then at fellow fools
Mask the misery
Make merry the Yule
But sing not too long
This silly saviour’s song
Offering hope
Where there is none
All hope’s long gone

Freedom in another year
Pension draws near
Out to pasture
To look longingly back
At the life sentence served
Unnerved
Now that I'm free to be me
I'm scared. Who was it used to be?