They spat it out, this is order,
slurping black sludge in the grey light,
over the shriek of static,
fingering the lint in pockets
that held nothing but rust and cold intentions.

They swore, the climb is open,
while welding the gates shut,
while the ladders were kicked away
to crush the fingers of the grasping below.
They called the carnage merit.

To the broken, they hissed, grind harder.
To the starving, they barked, wait your turn.
To the ones bleeding out on the pavement,
who paid for the privilege of the wound,
they sneered, be thankful you can feel pain at all.

They whispered, fear the other,
and pointed—
never up at the iron towers,
never at the shadowed glass—
but outward, into the mud,
at those whose scars were shaped differently,
whose misery spoke a harsher tongue.

They promised, the feed is free,
while the screens burned retinas,
broadcasting the same terror
wearing a new mask of flayed skin.
A thousand mouths,
chanting one lie.

They laughed, innocence has no shadows,
as the wires burrowed under the drywall,
as the plaster learned to listen,
as silence became the only language
that didn’t invite the boot.

They said, the cages are the foundation,
spoke of it like the inevitable rot of winter,
like gravity dragging meat to earth,
as bodies were processed
with industrial efficiency.

Every few years they said, pick your poison,
and laid out the knives—
different handles, same blade.
They called the slaughter
civic duty.

When the smoke of distant burning choked the sky,
they said, it is the price of peace,
said, it keeps the wolves at bay,
said it softly enough
to drown out the crunch of bone.

And when the filth leaked out—
gold-plated dungeons,
silent flights in the dead of night,
children rendered down into currency—
they cleared their throats
and turned up the volume on the static.

They said, don’t look at the blood.
They said, look at the circus.
They said, savagery is in their nature.
They said, we are the civilized ones.

They kept screaming.
That was the mechanism.
A wall of noise so thick,
so deafening,
that the truth was strangled before it could draw breath.

Only rarely,
in the dead hours when the generator hums low,
when the noise finally falters,
someone might wheeze,
This feels like dying.

But the sun rises grey and sickly.
The screaming resumes.
And the city—
built on a foundation of throats—
opens its eyes
and feeds.

 

 

 

 

Photo by Miranda Gale on Unsplash