The Chase

We chase the echo of a nursery rhyme,

the ghost of a father’s praise in a paycheck’s fold.

We seek the vanished kingdom of our youth,

where our small hands held the center of the world.

We call it work, this pilgrimage to worth,

the daily ritual, the rhythm and the hum,

a frantic search for the sun we knew at birth,

before the silence taught us to be numb.

And in the quiet spaces, on the train,

we catch a glimpse in a stranger’s hurried eye—

the same old map, the same familiar strain,

the same forgotten question, passing by.

A conspiracy of silence binds us fast,

a language spoken only with our feet

on pavement worn by shadows that we cast.

Our heads are bowed, our shared confession sweet

and terrible. We know. We all know this.

The buried ache, the universal script.

We seal the knowledge with a silent kiss,

and let the truth die softly on the lip.

From the cradle, they taught us their own hunger,

then handed us the spoon, and named the meal.

They built the walls when we were younger,

and taught us that their shelter was the real,

the only world. We learned to need their rain,

to thirst for water from their sanctioned wells,

to trade our strength for their anaesthetizing gain.

But what if we could break these quiet spells?

What power sleeps within the hands they bound?

What worlds could rise if we but turned and stood,

and tilled the soil of our own common ground?

So they conjure dragons, draw a phantom line,

and point to monsters rising in the east.

They sow the fear and say the fear is thine,

and call for sacrifice to feed the beast.

A beast born from the shadow of their hand,

a fire lit from sparks of their own greed.

And we, with borrowed anger, take our stand

on foreign soil, to plant a bitter seed,

dragged into harvests that were never ours,

blind to the strings, deaf to the puppeteer,

defending cages we mistake for towers.