Narrowing Times
At one time,
(a time-scape so broad
that it knew no ownership),
the world was wide,
there were no nations, no distinctions,
just humans in a well clothed landscape.
Progress found a way to be prosperous,
agriculture could feed not just families
but many others
they built walled cities
to keep their prosperity safe,
and every wall was a demarcation.
The clothes they wore
became status symbols,
and so, not to starve,
the poor had to clothe the wealthy.
The world began to fracture,
the wide open
became the over-populated narrows.
until one side of a street
could wage war against the other side.
Free people still existed,
but they lived on the margins
surviving only at the tacit consent
of the crushed hordes
crowded into the narrows.
If a person really tried to be free
the people of the narrows
would make TV shows about them,
pretty soon
the free became curiosities,
trapped in ever narrowing images,
forced to be viewed
inside an edited picture frame,
in a landscape that was once frameless.
A picture postcard of narrowness
can now be purchased
in any city, while the few
who still live outside such walls,
with handmade knives, they whittle for pennies
the wooden effigies
of warring narrowminded gods
suspecting they are no longer free,
but only carving out
just another form of narrowing.
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