The Low Grinding

That sound you hear?
The low grinding
of work, all work
from paid to unpaid to
uncompensated in any 
fashion. That sound
you hear is broken people
screaming or more likely
offering up a low graveled
growl as they are
pulverized.  That sound
you hear when you lean in close
is the valves of a fatty heart,
the bones of a sinking ship,
the rush of sugarblood,
the tendons slapping back
a little less every time, and 
the invisible sobbing of the 
knowing, lost brain as it 
softens and hollows. 

Repeat a million, a hundred million,
a billion times and more 
and how the grinding rises
in volume and as it does
how it drowns and muffles 
joy and contentment in its
blanket of desperate survival,
and how soon do we get to call it
an anthem for the low ground,
the national song of the country
of brute living, this place of 
mistake and reinforced mistake
and unintended consequences 
becoming canon and policy,
providing a simple,
dishonest answer to 
the disingenuous query,
“Is this normal?” “I dunno,
I just work here. I guess
this is normal. I can’t imagine
anything else.”