A glimpse around my town

There it is adrift, a week or two… 
I never cared to count all the days that fluttered away,
mornings that bestowed bleak skies boasting perpetual shade—
it was either my tendency to forgo schedule, or quit the race against the clock, 
or early arrival of monsoon winds when spring had just started to settle. 

The clock was an instigator of great anxiety and dread: 
it embodied routine, represented greed, 
and expected empathy and consideration to follow 
regardless of the habitual lack of sleep—
sleepless nights in company of a wandering mind, 
and the anchor that the clock became as it ticked, 
crushing all the while, a soul with its sheer weight.

I often dreamt of building a home
in a large grassland that spanned as far as vision would suspect,
and there, I would be robbed of the skies 
and proper sunlight due to the snowy whites that overlooked the estate— 
it was meant to be a cabin for two. 
There were many things that I overlooked: 
insulation, the car, groceries, gardens, predators and plants, 
a couple wills and wants, the pursuit to power,
the mares that roamed astray the last time I came here, 
the orphaned rain that killed a patch of land uphill, 
the tendency to exploit, coerce, influence and control, 
to fall into a self-affirmative condition akin to Ouroboros—
but it was alright, it was a dream afterall. 

“When you look at things closely enough,
everyone has been plagued with a desire to escape.”
An escape?
“...from all aspects of life that tie us to earth for one, 
then the involuntary participation in a process trade, 
where merits are judged, and survival is secured;
this is where some biddings fail, and people are derailed,
from the normative pace of the fabled pathways of life.”

An escape from a room that knew me well, 
where I’d suffocate;
it was seemingly kind, and inviting, 
but in a running undertone, I sensed for its wish
to sustain this state of misery, for a reason that I couldn’t know.
Where else did I have to go?
Outside, there is spring, and sunlight—
the onset of life for another year.
The air carries the corpse of the winter past, 
I can’t breathe, in the garden, or under a tree:
the air resists to service this wretched cell,
or dust that is airborne 
from all opportunist endeavors past my home.
I was a spectacle for the walls perhaps, 
a sight to see as I spiralled further,
and succumbed to more treachery, myth, 
and sickness of the head.

I remember moments when it felt like a downpour 
had bestowed this barren land.
I would feel a garden bloom for a moment or two—
a couple days at best, 
then the saplings would stunt in growth, 
and be engulfed by moss, 
which would soon perish too, 
in wait for the next downpour.

Here it was never day,
no sunlight to foster trees,
no heat would fall upon the leaves, 
no need for shade, no prospect of a bloom.
The clock had been tainted, 
covered in flesh and mud. 
It wouldn't progress past a second, 
and soon the minute hand would run its last minute.
Bystanders waited for the next downpour, 
or any vessel of hope, as grand claims, or promises of rainfall.
Some attempted to manufacture a clock again, calculate time, 
but that venture would never harbour form.

I gave up on the conquest one day as well, 
I'd come across a strange cast of spell: 
it would force the subject to sleep,
and replace them in their last dream.
The valley was my cure 
for the drought that fell upon this land, 
and yet the cause of all previously dormant wishes, and heartache.

Life then descended into either of two commitments:
to the clock, which I’d revoked in days long past, 
or to the drought, where people hoped for a monsoon which never fully comes.
The valley lacked any of those hardships, 
only imposing eternal dysfunction, disbandment 
and dread of all time spent away.
The valley was cunning, cruel, and distant, and cold, 
but I’d grown to love it in the formative years of my life...

"...now, there's little room for backtracking, 
the way to the valley is wide plenty, 
but just as narrow when you turn around."