Swallow and Retch

No matter where I go
I just can't escape the roar
Sitting by the lakeshore to my right
Three major highways to my left
One after another, lanes like racetracks
and the massive pica-pica grey city beyond.

Days like this I feel swallowed
This
is every day
and as it swallows me, I cannot
hold my breath for eternity, these
walls hold me in but they don't
keep it out, and I
feel so sluggish and diseased
Gorged on environmental, spiritual, social
pollution
Living in a 6-million person pressure cooker
The air is tight with agro vibes
and competing chaos.
What I breathe, what I eat, it seeps
through my skin, I'm
putting out fires but
I live in an electrical storm
and mere existence is a frayed live wire, sparks
showering on naked
flesh
Acid rain on the soul so I
don my suit and now
I can't feel, I'm blocked
but it still comes through
and it hurts
and it hurts
and it hurts
I can't breathe
this, forced to swallow
Gagging and retching on 6 million people's
energetic garbage.

Profoundly maladjusted
in a profoundly sick society
I take no solace in moral ground because
this sickness becomes me, I
live it, perform it, host the
parasite, the
notions of
escaping the cooker-box
but I
haven't learned
how to set myself free
from the inside.