Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
softcomponent Feb 2014
on minimum wage, you can expect
minimum work, yet it seems miniwage
employers often demand so much. dish
-do is meditation... but 7 hours straight
without a scheduled break (illegal!)
comes to be strangely therapeutic and
unjust. my colleagues are more-than
-decent.. they're especially strange, especially
kind. the no-break hides itself in small-biz
dialect as to owners barely break-even on
weekly basis due, most likely, to competition
from corporate conquistadors like McDonald's
and Denny's.. the evil colonial powers of America
looking to slowly realize manifest destiny in empty
faceless formatted 'buy me's I'm cheaps' my boss
is a failed artist, and one of the first things he said to
me was this: dishwashing ain't gonna cut it if you're
really going to become a writer. I mean, don't up and
quit on me, that'd **** me off and all.. but in the end,
if you're gonna be successful at your art, you have to
be willing to sacrifice everything.
he echoed the
painful decision factor facing every challenged, authentic
soul.. and I knew he was right. someday I would have to
forget security-fear and embrace insecurity-love if I want
to become who I am.

*everything must go.
my boss is not so-much a failed 'artist' as a failed 'writer' / successful 'chef.'
There will come a point when writing will have to become everything to me.
Jalaj Soni Feb 2018
"Look around you"

People are smiling, cheering their friends
Lifting the spirits of those that don't dissent
Carefree, responsible and respectfully mature
While only the pauses from routine, work as my cure

White light strikes the prism of my life
Prisoner of time, I am a slave of my grief
I'm blinded by your expectations and needs
They are weighing down on my survivor's instincts

I'm choking on my tears, I'm preying on my smile
I'm dying every morning, I'm dying every night
I'm strangling my desires to ever find peace
I'm forcing every poison to be gulped in by me

No music can help me, no art can sway me
No rush can stop me from laying down to quit
No rifle can shoot me, no knife can stab me
And hope to **** a soul, but an empty vessel

I sleep and I hope to wake up, no more
I have lost all my passions to the mighty orders of bores
I caution myself every day to never hope for hope
For its a noose, to my shimmering eyes, swinging through death

I can't live like this, I can't suffocate
And smile like all my dreams are as my childhood left
I can't accept the myopia of the world around me
Ridicule of my desire to see myself as a work of art

I can't stay mindless of the fact that all my friends are slaves
I can't stay ignorant to the ease of creeps, cheaps and strays
I am tired of keeping myself safe, with a silent venomous dagger
I need someone to put my faith in and leap into the dark, forever
Tiger Ayres Jan 2020
On top of a hill
There's a bird that caws
And on that hill
There's a gun that draws

A top of the hill
There's a chick that cheaps
And next to that
A flooding creek

On that hill
An echoing groan
On that same hill
A bullet does go

On top of a hill
There's a bird that sleeps
And on that hill
There's a gun that breathes
On top of a hill

— The End —