The clock is ticking, and I’m hanging from the hour hand,
Grasping for dear life,
Praying not to fall, and if I do, that I’ll be saved once more.
The ticking of the second hand rings in my ears.
It creeps closer and closer, I hold my breath as it passes.
The hour hand that holds me bends beneath my weight.
Metal is not indestructible, especially when time runs thin.
I am not immune to damage, either.
I cannot take the impact at the end,
when air and sidewalk finally meet.
The hardness of reality will crush me, even from below.
I am expected to grow my body longer, so I may reach the ground safely
but who has ever done so before me?
Not everyone I see on the busy city streets below is the same outrageous height.
Everyone is different to the measuring tape, why must I be, as you say, tall?
I am a person, not a skyscraper. I’m afraid I cannot reach your sky-high expectations.
I only wish to reach my own, to fly with the birds that mock me now,
With their freedom and grace visible from every angle my eyes take,
With their eyes glowing and wings spread as wide as they desire.
The ground is the common goal, but that is not my destination.
The status quo has nothing for me but the simple, dull life of a naive coward, relishing in their safety and ignorance.
I wish to soar above with the angels, as I am the same to myself
I want to walk alongside the Father, for he is the reason I am still standing at all.
The sweat of labor fills my eyes and runs down my cheeks during times of melancholy
For my efforts go unrecognized and harshly scrutinized by you and everyone else
How do I begin to admire my reflection in the morning
If you do not see me at all when I’m standing before you?
Or do you see something else, a monster, perhaps, that burdens your life
and steals your silence with its wretched wailing?
How do you see me?
Am I not the same as you, the image of Christ as the Lord intended, or
am I something different in your perception?
I do not know how to be beautiful for any visionary
I am told that the way I am is enough, but is it really?
If I were a piece of art, as you generalize every human being to be,
why is the eraser my most common visitor and the graphite my most hesitant client?
It makes no sense to me at all, how you can see the broken back of some old passerby and strike him roughly as if with no humanity,
but take a man with a sturdy spine held up by ego and glamour and praise him a King.
It makes no sense!
A peasant is I, while the fool wears the royal crown, deception being his right-hand man.
I break my bones and make change, while he sits on his rump and plays quite a show.
I receive the scraps hungrily and gratefully, knowing I won’t be rewarded more for my work
while he feasts on the neighbor’s dinner, and the neighbor’s neighbor’s dinner
And is never satisfied, demanding more and more and giving less and less
How do you not see me? I wear no cloak of invisibility, yet...
He has pulled the curtain over my small frame, while you praise that fool that conned to reign.
This kingdom will fall apart soon enough, and I will fall when the Devil’s time comes,
A few hours before the chime.