#title Murmurs and Cries from the Underground
#author Anonymous
#LISTtitle Murmurs and Cries from the Underground
#SORTauthors Anonymous
#SORTtopics despair, work, Blatte, The Local Kids, The Local Kids #3, poetry
#date Winter 2019
#source Translated for The Local Kids, Issue 3
#lang en
#notes First appeared untitled in <em>Blatte (Sussurri e grida dal sottosuolo)</em>, Issue 1, June 2015



I have to get away from my home

thoughts have saturated the room leaving no space for oxygen

have you ever tried to walk hand in hand with restlessness?

and if this began to shadow your every step, what would you do?

the worst is to sense the answer without being able to scrape up the courage to act.

<br>

I am speaking of work, understand?

that part of the day taken for granted

or rather to be served as a punishment.

<br>

Why condemn yourself to a time suspended

spent with your eyes on the clock waiting to die

so as to be reborn a few breaths later?

existence as hourglasses to live to the utmost

but only in the moments granted by the hand that turns them over.

have you ever wept thinking about all the sand that you’ve let fall, oh so slowly?

haven’t you shaken with rage at having allowed gravity to be in control?

<br>

Anxious for freedom, spasms and tremors, blurred vision, tinnitus, salivating like a dog,

I am hungry, and they throw me crumbs in the mud

not smiling with your dirty face, not saying all is well

that’s how it should go!

<br>

I get no consolation in knowing that the shift will end, that the weekend will come

that there will be days off, rest days and holidays,

that I will have the right to sick days

I AM SICK NOW!

<br>

I get sick every time that an alarm forces me to get up

that I don’t get to choose when I leave my house and when I return

every time that I pass over the same miles, that I obey a boss

that I put on a mask to face imposed human interactions

every time that I take that envelope wondering if it was worth the pain.

<br>

I wear a ball-and-chain, have a yoke on my neck, blinders like a horse,

a repertoire of overused metaphors, not one original expression

I have stability to maintain, taxes to pay, vices and pleasures that aren’t free

a repertoire of pitiful excuses

not one plausible argument

I have shelves of illuminating books, a reality that speaks clearly to me,

and a youthfulness with a short fuse,

but an arsenal of doubts and fears that keep me motionless.

<br>

What else shall I write then?

nothing more for now

<em>I have to go to work.</em>