Lost in an Upscale World

I live with people of this upscale world, whose world revolves around fantasies of the rich and famous, whose excessive luxury they've made their idols --  palaces in suburbia whose land grow scandalous precious, fine dining ambiance like oases in the desert, glittering stones stolen from the earth and the people, and pleasures of the body to escape the small sufferings decidedly they've no right to experience.

Yet I do not belong here.   Suburbia on the hilltop demands unacceptable irony.  The foods of affluence are reprehensible gluttony in the face of poverty.  Gold and diamonds are but shallow shades compared to inner beauty.  And the business of pleasure is not as true as life and health lived strongly and purposefully.

I chase for happiness, but mine is not to be found in these upscale seclusion.  It's like an unlit cell in a dungeon beneath the earth.  My heart yearns for simplistic adventures, to share simple wonders of diversity of class and culture.  But in this monoculture prison I am trapped.  I am beholden to man in his evolution.  But now I'm chained.

Out of Place

Lost in a crowd of colored tables,
What am I doing here?
Out of place in the chattery,
I sat for what passes as eternity.

My supposed companion has gone
Away in her own affairs
Oblivious in her own conversations
To my state of sorry disposition.

Perhaps she has forgotten
Perhaps that is certain
To make me feel her insensitivity
In ways she does not understand.

Winter's Song

It used to be a precious melody
Charting the winds of summer.
It was a song of promise
Rhyming with no rhythm

But a siren's dance has shown color
And truth has beset unwelcome.
Its melancholic march grows steady
To the emptiness of the funeral.

Then there was not a heart to listen
Or one reasonable mind to imagine.
Only deaf ears which knew but noise
And now not even one at all.

The notes sounded their dying,
Resigned to a dissonant chord.
And from there the horizon
Was left only bittersweet silence.