The Storm Feast

intro

I am sick of the small life,

the measured life,

the polite little cage

with curtains and a calendar.

I am sick of the clocks

installed in the walls

like cold mechanical gods,

dividing the infinite

into shifts, bells, and orders,

until the living march in circles

as working slaves of time.

Morning arrives

in a uniform.

It stamps its papers,

opens the gates,

and the streets pour out

their obedient armies.

Look at them

shoes shining, eyes lowered,

hands trained for buttons,

backs bent beneath invisible bells.

And where were you

when the roof of the world gave way?

When the city opened its iron throat

and howled at the sky?

When the tables stood empty

and the young were taught

to swallow their voices whole?

Were you blessing the engines?

Were you oiling the jaws

that chewed through the morning?

Were you down on your knees

in that golden temple of taking,

holding out your hands

for one more blessing?

Enough.

solo

I want the heavens cracked open

above the sleeping streets.

I want the old stars shaken loose

from their black machinery.

I want the moon dragged down

from its royal distance

and raised in the square

like a furious lantern.

I want the sky returned whole.

Not sliced into windows.

Not rented by the hour.

Not sold back to the tired

as a gentle blue permission.

They have built a future

of glass corridors

and immaculate gates.

They have taught hunger

to speak in numbers.

They have dressed fear

in clean white clothes

and called it progress.

But underneath the pavement,

something vast is waking.

The roots are not polite.

The roots do not negotiate.

The roots remember rain,

fire,

the first black mouth of the earth

before the towers rose

and lied about heaven.

No more numbered mornings.

No more obedient sleep.

No more bowing

before the dead bright altar

of usefulness.

Let the factories keep their smoke.

Let the towers keep their mirrors.

Let the spotless future

lock itself inside

and starve on its own perfection.

I choose the feast.

The broken feast.

The storm feast.

The table overturned

beneath a laughing sun.

I choose the dangerous garden,

the storm with no master,

the wild choir of living things

rising untamed, radiant,

magnificent,

free.