Poem: Windows on the train

Windows on this train but we don’t face them.
Our positions architected to make us face us.
The rat race architected to break us, erase us.
There are windows on this train but we don’t face them.

This train isn’t beautiful, it’s designed for commuting.
Built for the herd, built for diluting.
Diluting our dreams
and muffling our screams
as we live lives like cattle in pens
playing out loops that have no end.
There are windows on this train but we don’t face them.

We learn no lessons,
we ask no questions,
like why are we all moving in the same direction
with same inflections,
in our cold, dead, eyes that stay glued to our phones,
avoiding eye contact with faces like stone?
What has lead us all away from our homes,
while extinguishing the fire that lived in our bones?
There are windows on this train but we don’t face them.

Sunrise behind,
but sadly – I’m blind
to the beauty that resides
from just the other side
of the windows on this train, because I don’t face them.

As the sun beams break my trance,
I begin a shuffled dance
to twist in to a stance
to view the windows of this train,
I turn and face them.

But we enter a tunnel, and they all turn black.
There is no sunrise just the sound of the track,
Only my reflection is staring back, screaming…
There were windows on this train, you should have faced them.

-A poem by Bryan Roper