Chrome

I wear a mask and suit each day to work.
Plastic and chrome.
Black jacket, black tie.

I am one of a billion.
Same suit, same mask.
Nothing new to task.

Back to the future is my home.
Where my beat’s and rhythm’s dance.

Neon eighties bass.
Boom boxed in.
Deep craters of twelve inch speakers.
crammed into hatchback Camaros.
When everyone wore beepers.

Watching the rain drops dance on top
of the car’s cherry red paint job.
Before there was techno.
Before there were elbos
clicking colorless rainbows.

How quickly the future grew from ones and zeroes.

So much progress.
So many precious metals extracted for this.
For laptops and smart phones.
Look… no hands on the wheel.
Driving with impunity on highways of suburban sprawl.
Miss your exit and there is no turning back.

No restrooms for miles and miles.
Entire subdivisions plotted gorged and withdrawn.
Ghost towns of economic downfall.

My mask is not heroic.
It is real and HUMAN.
It signals I am just like you.
A part of the machine we all feed.

Divided to distribute wealth and greed.
For the mortgages we labor.
For the future of our children we favor,
dreaming of a world where masks are not needed.
Where a person’s passions are aggregated.

Once lost, now found.
Once neglected, to become reconnected.