‘The Broken Candelabrum’ by Robert L. Franklin

I have seen mankind fall on their swords for less
than the established retail value of swallowed pride,
trading their hearts for dollars
and their minds for neckties
with which they can lynch their former selves
among the crabgrass and ragweed
of the twenty-fourth floor sociopathic
Tetris hedge-fund maze labyrinth
for the enjoyment of
a mob of staplers, monitors, computer towers,
and posters of cats offering sound advice
about “hanging in there”
just moments before they plummet to their deaths.

I have seen the youth
cross out the eyes of their ambitions,
watching their heroes become idols
for their antagonists,
burning their records and magazines
while chanting incomplete criticisms
of conformity and structured living,
suspending their knowledge of
necessary social evolution
for their perceived hedonistic utopias,
where cornflower blue nooses affixed to starched
and pressed and polished garments exist
only as a bonfire accelerant
and quips like “responsibility” and “normalcy”
and “establishment” are considered profane
instead of commonly-attributed curses
like fuck, shit, ass, cunt,
and every variation thereof.

I have seen the rebellious lawful
and conformists lawless,
each forsaking themselves to count the spiders
burrowing into their cavities,
trading comforts for change,
sex for impotence,
and wealth for poverty
to fill their veins with liquid orgasms
in dingy motel rooms
still adorned with chalk outlines,
their noses with the sweetest sugars available
on sale in back alley checkouts,
and their livers
with multiple varieties of ethanol bliss,
while filling
the throats of meth-addled streetwalkers,
the pussies of wined-and-dined Park Avenue dolls,
and the assholes of the occasional randomized,
submissive female creature with low self-esteem
whose contractual obligation began
with a swipe to the right.

I have seen the will of the people
fade into obscurity,
efficiently replaced
by substantive machines of precedent,
the life fading from their eyes
as the chips and codes merge with the biology,
making mankind indistinguishable from his creation
and his creation indistinguishable from mankind,
a degree of slavery of which humanity
has never previously bore witness,
for it is imperative
to the enslaved to remain enslaved,
as their emails, retweets, comments, and likes
will not be acknowledged themselves
and their identification
must be renewed every two years
to avoid becoming obsolete.

I have seen the fairer sex
become a battleground of ideals,
with offensives executed in their wombs,
occupations upon their breasts,
and collars savagely tightened around their necks,
for as some would argue the role of the bitch
is to stay spread on a 500-thread count
Egyptian cotton prison floor
answering only “yes”
to the matrimonial corrections officer
supervising her gendered incarceration,
while others would elevate her
to a status akin to God,
or bestowing upon her Lockean natural rights
of personal accountability,
in spite of what the diseased dick may object.

I have seen the faith of mankind rattled
into bondage and submission,
the logic of the parishioners
of establishment codes and ethics
reduced to stuttered phrasing
and broken candelabrums
while they juxtapose
their indoctrinated beliefs
with the heresy they have long opposed
in considering that perhaps the divine truth
is that there is no divine truth
and that life is merely
an inconsequential existence
on an inconsequential planet
at an inconsequential point in time,
that there are no miracles or signs
or testaments of any metaphysical value,
that their lives are pointless
in the grander sense,
devoid of any everlasting purpose,
and that upon
the drawing of their final breaths,
they will only rot, entombed in an oaken box
six-feet deep in the dominion of worms.

Copyright 2015 by Robert L. Franklin. All rights belong to the author and material may not be copied without the author’s express permission.

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