They guard our gates. We are ruled by mechanised gods.

We are not free.
We are not real.
We are not awake.

Our mornings wake up to dew and smoke. We wake up and pick up our broomsticks and sweep.

You and I are made to sweep.
And it is through these sweeps we dance our fated dances.

Dance to wake the castles,
and water the gardens,
and venerate Emperors long dead and gone.

“This,” we say, “is our duty.”
“To belong.”

“To bow together.”
“To hope as one.”

We, all key cogs in the machinery. Everyone has a broom and dustpan. Everyone is made to sweep.

"Is this the land," we ask, "that we sang for and dreamt our feverish cartoon dreams for?"
Perhaps not. Our stories exist only in a land beyond time.

We’ve been there. It is a mechanism for the gods. They too hold brooms.

They too sleep in shrines of stone.
They too live in temples of steel.

The gold ones have long ago burned.