Keep on turning, little gears,
keep the machine running.
Don't bother this feelings of yours,
don't pay attention to this pain.

Forget your thoughts,
I'll fix them all.
Be a leader
but not for yourself.
We'll tell you what to wear,
who to talk to,
we'll congratulate you
for an useless work
just to keep this little gear turning.

I don't want to see
your home or your family in your face.
If you smile, may it be
due to your achieved goal.

Everything I tell you
is for your own good.
I myself comply with all these rules.
I'm your boss and I have a boss,
who has a boss,
who has a boss,
who has a boss,
who has a boss,
who has no idea what's happening here
(but he has the money, so that's okay).

Give me your time
(at full attention, please)
and I'll give you a purpose,
and I'll promise heaven on earth
fancy luxury cars and empty apartments
(just maybe, though)

Fighting battles alone
in a war that has been lost for ages.
Battles of inner struggles,
of incoherent thoughts,
of distant fading desires,
of contradictions that tortures our soul.

And you wake up
having lost a part of you,
stripped away cowardly
(and you can't even name by whom)

Loose in an uniform immensity,
in that different kind of void
with no lights, no moon, no stars
(but everything still visible),
lacking the soft and warm walls of reality (sanity?)
while time slowly escapes
the ropes of our perception,
wandering alone, with no air to breathe
Yet, unable to die.

Only then we are ready to realize
that every rule is useless.
Despair has taken over.

Only two paths can we take:
start from scratch
or fade.

No matter the ways we choose,
the ones we did not choose will be more numerous.
There will always be more personalities
than the ones we decide to wear.

I live as a boat that departs without announcing a destination,
choosing along the way which port to anchor on,
always regretful for the ports I did not choose.

I take with me a small piece of everything I have known
(and how could I not?)
so my memories cannot betray me,
so the places I have been can leave a footprint on me.

I follow this path blindly,
heavier at each step
(or with weaker muscles, I could not tell),
with burdens getting loaded and loaded,
with fears from other roads,
missing passions from other ports,
with nostalgia of passing landscapes.

I keep on walking to keep on living,
I keep on choosing some paths, abandoning many others,
Sad with every time I detach something,
Sadder even for the choices I did not make
(but did even if I did not want to),
I keep on sensing smells I never experienced,
touching flowers I have never seen.

I do not renounce what I leave behind
(Like Drummond: "from everything a little remained"),
but the directions I did not pick,
the river courses that never came to be,
the dry branches never to flourish,
the futures made impossible by my choices.

As I wash my hands on rough waters
I leave some of what I was,
some of what I think I am.
I let me go just a little
to keep on going.

All this ballast, this will to take everything with me
can do me no good at all
if my weight restrains the places I could be.

The paralysis,
the agony of unresponsive muscles,
the coward voice that barely moves the air,
the hesitation that confuses
what we are and what we are not.

This fear that makes me avoid
discomfort, pain, the unknown,
this fear guardian-torturer,
does not fit me no more.

The fear of the unreal,
the fear of the impossible,
the fear of breaking myself,
the fear of the fear,
the fear of the uncontrollable wills,
this petty fear that serves only itself,
that hits palaces, and houses and slums,
the fear of a dingy past,
or of an obscure future,
of the prophetic images of possible apocalypses,
professed by notorious atheist scientists,
or the fear of the science propagated by unbelieving priests,
or the fear of the starvation I never had (that made me obese),
or the fear of the accident I never experienced (that locks me home),
or the fear of the policeman and the thief (that armors my car),
or the fear of rejection I never suffered (that fuels my social life with happy pictures),
and the sum of all these fears, the ultimate fear,
the fear of never come to be what I dreamed to be.

Today, none of my muscles will obey them.

We live short lives
bounded by walls in houses,
by grounds under our feet,
by money in our dreams,
by glasses in our sights,
by fear in our endeavors,
by shame in our performances,
by blame in our relationships,
by attachment to objects.

We are not able to conceive infinity,
it remains just a concept, unimagined in our minds.
Infinity is the only absolute greatness;
all other greatnesses rely on where we stand.

Yet, we aim at grandnesses,
we aim to impact, to know and to be known,
to influence, to be liked, to be loved.
We aim our little stories
to be written over and over again
as if every repetition would keep us alive
but we forget:
our imagination is shaped by limits.

We will die,
our stories will perish,
our stone laws will turn into dust,
our countries will fold.
The sun will swallow earth,
and turn into a blackhole.
Everything shall collapse at some point.

Even our pain.

Convicted murderer locked in his cell
Watched by guards, news and defenders of morality.

They say about the case: "Thirty years? Too few!"
They say about the judge: "He's a *****!"
They say about the policeman: "He should have killed him!"
They say about the prisoner: "Human? No, he  ain't!"
They say about the dead: "He's a saint!"

We sleep peacefully seeing the beast jailed,
the criminal act contained,
as a reward for the things we were deprived:
The murders we did not commit (but wanted),
The aggressions suppressed (but wanted),
The lack of character we did not manifest (but, hell, we wanted!),
The sick look in the mirror we learned to mask.

Killing is not just pulling the trigger.
It is about the indifference,
about all the fingers pointing out failures,
about the accumulated pain of every struggle,
about greedy desires fueled by what we see daily,
about the lack of power, from cradle to coffin,
about the eyes we meet everyday but cannot see.

What is worth a fair sentence
over an ever unfair life?
What dose of love will fall
in the remains of a life built in such lack of compassion?
Why do we keep on returning to eyes and teeth
while Hammurabi remains buried for tens of centuries?

We do not fear the murderer,
we fear our own rage, our frailty and lack of control.
We proudly watch the misery of the prisoner
for we renounced the free animal
for the imprisoned human.

The freedom from inorganic paralysis,
The birth of information,
The cliché of the ephemeral,
The never ending search for complexity.

Is it just a temporary prison in our weak bodies,
in our insecurities, and our worries,
Or is it an unique cosmic opportunity
that we should exhaust every fraction of a second
into something productive, enjoyable and selfish?
How much would we sacrifice
To never need to deal with death?

Does it have a worth in itself
(therefore question it would be stupid)
or does it have worth for the things we can do with it?
Has the organic life any contribution except for life itself
(in a broad perspective)?

What makes life so great that makes it, though, small?
We try so hard to define it
and, yet, it is the most incomprehensible concept.
Tirelessly fighting against universal laws
of equilibrium and disorder and chaos and constancy
(will purpose subdue chances?)

Maybe, the greatest value of life is uncertainty.
Uncertainty of what is expecting us,
of what will we gain or lose,
of what will we experience,
of what is there to happen and to surprise.
But, most of all,
the uncertainty of what is not life.
Death is a part of life, and not its opposite.
The opposite of life is the certainty of the inanimate world.

There is a certain illusion
that arrivals and departures are different,
that ways are just obstacles that, in the end,
lead us to an endpoint.

They just lead us into new ways.

My ways feel the weight of my feet, my wheels,
of cars and buses and trucks and tanks;
they feel the weight of heavy conscience, of tears and of guilts.
And, in return, they lead us to who knows where.

We spend our entire lives building ways in forms of
bridges, roads, tunnels, trails and rails.
Leveling, tearing, drilling, exploding some ****** land
in order to get somewhere.

I walk through roads in neighborhoods
through books and program codes,
through notes in songs,
through colors in the sky,
through dreams and imaginations,
because life is the ultimate way:
from birth to death.

It would be unwise to believe that the way is not important

I do not know the colors I cannot see,
and the frequencies I do not listen.

I do not know the ideas that does not serve as mirrors,
and the images that are not my own.

The moon remains remote without my footprint.

Everything I know, I own;
What I do not know is not mine, does not fit me

I fear the unknown because I fear what I am not:
I fear my poverty because poor I never was
I fear death because dead I have never been
I feared light before seen it for the first time

But the unknown is bricks and frames of my creation;
I only learn from things that are obscure to me.

I can only truly learn what I fear.

Anxiety is the absence of present,
Is the thoughts forgetting the body
Is the victory of the boredom, of the things that may never be
Is the waiting in boarding room for a delayed flight (a real flight?)

It is the interrupted breath,
Missing the air, although sick of air,
To be drown in tricky small chances, holding up to impossibilities

The fear of incapacity,
Rejoice in our own setbacks,
The silent scream, aborted, buried in guilt, remorse and curses
To doubt yourself for no reason at all,
To live miserably and scare death itself with pain

Walk without ever reaching a corner.
To look for a bar and to not have a bar, or
To look for a bar, finding a bar and to not want a bar.

To **** and to account at the same time,
Close the eyes and see monsters,
Open the eyes and see monsters,
Attack the monsters with other stronger monsters
(who stop, smell your fear and end up turning against you),
To know that all monsters are yours,
Fed and incited by you like dogs in a junkyard
(at some point you stop to see your own body bitten to the bones by them)

It is to quench your thirst with poison,
Build up walls around yourself to protect from your own assaults.

Anxiety, my friend, is the rise of non-sense, of the unreal.
Past and future does not coexist with present.
Just wake up.
WAKE UP, little fool.