Original Sin

Cold steel stretches
with gray scales of rigid glass--
up, up, up,
in never-ending concrete graphs
  of geometric
        symmetry.

Want has been erased,
and need buried away
in this haven of gentility--
a jungle
  (tamed);
a garden--
    weeded.

The citizens march in pairs,
through daily gates--
inspections, searching
for discontent
  (which breeds only misery),
as they preserve
their paradise.

I recoil, shrinking from the stares
of a million drones imagining
individuality.
If I meet their gaze,
  they will draw me in...
    into their perfection;
    their safety;
      the muffled angles of
    their city.


I flee...

back to the uncertain,
              untamed,
                unknown--
where the moonlight lives, governed only
by uncharted stars
  whirling above.

I scramble up a pine
just to feel wild bark
    on my palms,
pressing spicy needles
    to my face
and inhaling the sharpness.
I rejoice as branches scrape my cheeks.

As the sun blossoms its flame
  on a verdant-velvet horizon of treetops,
there are
  far-off shadows
of flawless metal spires
  in the distance.


I embrace the wild demons,
  and hold close
    my endless sins.