Written by Jonathan Aryeh Wayne, June 3, 2016

Stuck in self-induced slavery,
Stemming from safety and security.
Skimmed by the forsaken sideswipes,
I became indiscernible by my peers.

It was midnight on Spring Street.
A man walked past me singing to himself,
While I watched piles of garbage by the hour
Accumulate in aromas so awfully sour.

When wheels churned nearby rice pudding,
I started moving, turning corners, laced with morters.
Sickened and thickened by the joys,
I returned to numb my back on hardwood noise.

I found myself in a waking dream,
Wasting my time in front of a computer screen.
I fried my eyes the following day
Searching for another place to stay.

When I sat on the daily buses from Weehawken,
I looked around at robot beings on their way
To their monotonous, paranoid jobs,
Stricken with rickets and old sports tickets.

They once sat in their climate-controlled offices,
With windows sealed shut for all eternity.
But those were the fortunate ones,
Not the brainwashed dishwashers.

Where was the liberty in the Lincoln Tunnel?
Every day on the unmarked bus was monotony,
To and from BLVD East and Times Square.
Under shivery rivers, my liver quivered.

Before the supposed best bagel store closed,
I had less than 10 minutes to order
From a reduced menu that only featured
Bagels, cream cheese and soft drinks.

It was 4 PM, and I needed to eat my brunch,
Somewhere, anywhere, there was a place to sit.
I wasn’t fit for New York Shitty,
As a Shitsburgh transplant for only 3 days.

Two nights earlier, after buying a falafel on the street,
I couldn’t find a single outdoor bench to sit and eat.
And since I never mastered the art of stoop sitting,
I leaned against a railing in Sara Roosevelt Park.

On my last bite in the Lower East Side,
I took it all in stride, after two Israeli men walked by.
Bevakasha, Atah Medaber Anglit?
I could have said, or been left for dead.

I was suspended in half a sneeze,
Vaporizing like the sewage breeze.
The steam of the underworld murmured out loud,
And slowly but surely, I howled without the crowd.

I was no longer one of the millions of carpenter ants,
Walking uniformly in my own existential stance,
As I approached the Jane Hotel to urinate and hydrate,
Amongst throngs of possible soulmates.

I could barely walk in through the front doors,
As dozens or hundreds of 20 Somethings
Congregated the inner dwellings of the lounge,
Drunk, reeked in cologne and perfume.

After leaving the poisonous men’s room, I exited,
Crossing the street to the Hudson River Greenway.
I sat on a bench with a cheese and chocolate croissant.
Four minutes later the park was officially closed.

A park police security vehicle the size of a golf cart,
Slowly approached me along the bike lane.
I willingly arose off the bench with the last remnants
Of flaky pastry in my mouth, dislodged between my teeth.

I spent a total of four and a half minutes sitting down,
Before city park police scared me away.
The muscles in my legs had not yet adjusted,
And no longer could my wits be trusted.

Days later, from the Amtrak train, I viewed lush pastures,
Of cattle, horses and chickens grazing patiently.
Hard working Amish farmers reconfirmed my convictions,
Verifying my longing for moral jurisdictions.

Come goat, and nudge me in the morning,
Arouse me from my slumber instead of the fire engine.
I wanted meaning and community,
Over the apathy of cruel anonymity.

Simple animals, simple lifestyles, simple eating,
Would not have caused a single dimple in this template.
One could feel human again,
Rich in productivity, itching for proclivity.

Wordless choirs of communal nonexistence,
Spoke volumes of my inner subsistence,
Whenever I walked the streets of big shitties
Like New York or Salt Lake.

No more did I want to live in a city, living intermittently.
Some days being high, and some being low.
No more should this instability require my time.
Nothing less shall inquire my mind.

But alas, the last sidewalks were obliterated for more cars,
Streets became unpassable from endless traffic jams,
While endless road rage culminated
In the sheer gridlock of both mind and body.

Abandoning their cars was the final option,
After they realized that sitting for hours in traffic was insane.
It had created more stress, more inefficiency
And reduced positive thinking.

People soon walked again, biked again, breathed again.
Cities depopulated, in favor of local communities.
When the last shooting sprees occurred on the 405,
The auto industry’s setbacks were etched in pavement.

It had come down to this: there were just too many cars,
And not enough people to drive them!
It had seemed for the better half of two centuries,
Common sense had been replaced by utter folly.

Yet, from the pastoral, loving Amish countrysides,
Did this new paradigm shift occur.
When unlivable pollution finally overtook society,
The newfound shift was cult-inspired.

The idiocy of mankind, impaired with disillusionment,
Marked the grieving sighs of obese men and women.
When their bloated bodies were ejected from buses,
Radioactive flowers rose up, straining mother nature.

Phlegmatic conversations marked with imprudence
Were dispersed via genetically modified insects.
While all the while, university pedants dyed their beards,
Before finally succumbing to dystopia.

Their countless, didactic emissaries retracted.
Finalizing their 8th editions, their scientific studies
Couldn’t convince the cynical masses,
That the natural world had decided once and for all.

From one city to another, I roamed
Ramming coin after coin into people’s palms.
I ran, with followers behind my back intending to suffocate me
In a parallel universe where I was well known.

Not until the cows of death, from which their teats
Milked my remaining brethren to kingdom come,
Did the fruits of my leisure knock me on the skull,
Dulling my damaged ego from decades of adulthood.

And the parade of clownish loons and anteaters,
Continued down the last open inches of rubbled road.
But I was already prepared for the true future slavery,
For my mind had been indoctrinated and upgraded.

The human cult I joined was based on the karma industry.
Now with New York Shitty gone for good,
The few hipsters that survived were my apostles,
After I re-taught them the fundamentals of human living.

Clandestine destiny awaited me in that after-time.
Words became empathized, birds sympathized,
While frolicking and rollicking, I severed myself
From the chlorinated aftereffects of lifelong shitty showers.