Chapter 1 – Gears

  A Unfinished Poem

  The Way I Probably Die

  By: Vincent Augustus

  I probably die unnamed, anonymously

  Just another human defeated by its felling

  I probably die as a stranded chronicler

  I probably die stagnated

  Between the poetry and the fear of not being accepted…

  I have another cup off coffee. It’s already three in the morning, and this strophe of five verses are everything I've managed to create. The ideas don’t emerge, it's as if they're stuck in the depths of my mind.

  Most of the nights are like this; I sit, start writing the text, and right after typing a few words, the excitement that have took me goes away, and the only thing that remains is the void, the blank page. This will be just another unfinished work, just another failure.

  I turn off the goddamn computer. Trying to disregard my own incompetence, i take my pills and go to bed.

  While I'm lying down, attempting to rest, my mind starts to speculate; As time passes, I finish fewer and fewer stories, and the ones I finish carries with them the felling of incomprehension, maybe because they are so personal, they will not be understood, not because the competence of the public, but because my limited ability to portrait them.

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  I consider, maybe I should ignore this feelings, that tormented me for years, and expose my art to the world? Not concern myself with third parties opinions? Maybe I should abandon my ambitions? Forsake the only way I have to express myself and adapt to a “normal” life? Probably, I should adhere to the system? Become just another cog, with the solo purpose of maintaining it′s operation? Live the rest of my life in mediocrity, serving someone else? No ambitions, no expressions, no dreams, just existing. Maybe my only way forward will be the search for survival and the abandonment of the dream? This questions, propose by my psyche, are constant and unending.

  Even though I am medicated, sleep comes slowly. This state of mental torpor is already something common; it always occurs, every night. No matter how much I reflected, I would never be able to find an answer, I've been trapped for years in this labyrinth created by my own mind. Over time my eyes close, and little by little I fall asleep, tormented by the blank page.

  The sun's rays gently illuminate my face, the annoying sound of my alarm rings incessantly throughout the small apartment. I get up, still tired, and look at the time, half past six in the morning, half an hour late.

  I jump out of bed and start to get ready, I must hurry. Trying to avoid another scolding from my boss, I put on the first clothes I find lying around the apartment and leave, hurrying my pace, I still have to catch two buses to the city center, I just hope they're not late.

  Late, five minutes, damn public transport.

  My boss attacks me again, saying the same old nonsense; “You have to be responsible”, “Your schedule is from eight to eight, you have to arrive at eight, not eight and five.” Always the same conversation, the same tone of superiority, like a king addressing his subjects. It’s incredible, how a person who is slightly superior to another, according to this society, thinks he has the right to judge and condemn us. Well, I couldn’t expect anything different, because my boss is just another cog, whose only concern is to make the system work as well as possible. I pretend to care, just as he pretends to care, and I begin my long twelve-hour shift.

  Time seems to be stagnant, motionless. For every call answered, I am forced to hear yet another complaint about the “weak” signal, canceling or changing plans, non-functional internet, among others. Futile, this is the word that accurately describes my feelings during these twelve hours.

  In the few minutes of break time we have, people seek to socialize with each other; a waste of time, a baseless search for a purpose other than answering a phone. We are puppets being manipulated by the invisible hand of society, so instead of engaging this charade, I choose to keep quiet. Introverted, that's how other people define my personality; well, I categorize it another way: futile.

  On the way back to my small apartment, I continuously wish for inspiration to shine upon me again.

  I spend two hours standing in a crowd of strangers, frowning, bored with their own unhappy lives, devoid of a dream. As I look around, I see people blindly following the system, a cluster of cogs surviving in the concrete jungle. For years I have been wishing that the enthusiasm for writing would return, that the creativity of the past would return, this night is just one more of the many that I have already experienced.