He stood like a ghoul–
Head down, back slouched;
He was moving with the belt,
Which looked dreary and long.
He rose and looked around once more,
His clamps were still open–they had never been closed;
The belt itself offered no resistance,
He was free to leave!
But how could he? It was forbidden,
For he’d been raised to never leave;
Wise men claimed there was nothing beyond-
The belt was all that existed.
He’d heard tales of remarkable souls,
Who left the belt and reached Elysium;
But those ahead of him on the belt,
Called those stories childish fantasies;
The belt was the only guarantee,
Of harmony and success.
And while he dreamed of the knowledge,
That lay in the world beyond;
He felt a sudden jolt from behind,
It was almost as if the belt had sensed
His desire to leave and fought back.
It pressed him down, shattered his dreams,
But he refused to give in;
For in the midst of that struggle,
He had realized all that mattered.
The belt was without restraints–it had no traps,
The real barriers were revealed to be
The cohorts of men on the belt with him;
It was they who held him back,
It was they who pushed him down,
And attacked him when they sensed
His yearning for a life beyond.
But he wasn’t going to give in,
Not after how close he was to freedom;
He struggled to break free,
And devise a plan to escape the belt.
And then, in a magical moment,
He was free! He had gotten away!
He jumped off the queue and fled,
That was the last the men saw of him.
And then began the lies–they hated him now,
Their envy at his escape, disguised as anger,
Led to him being ridiculed by the remaining men.
They couldn’t figure how someone else
Escaped the queue while they couldn’t.
And so they wiped all evidence of him,
Till he was nothing but a myth;
Their children never heard about the man
Who had left the belt.
But he couldn’t care less,
He was exploring the outside world;
He’d achieved fame and success,
By breaking the chain of Conformism.
Yet he did pity those who he
Once traveled on the belt with;
Breaking free had made him realize,
That they were the causes of their own ensnarement.
They were the only things preventing each other
From living a life beyond the ordinary.
But he knew that eventually someone,
Like him, would plan to escape the belt;
And so he left behind his footprints,
To guide the dreamers of the future.
Analytical Abhiram 