Shortcut

The world is a blur of hungry feet,
A cacophony of haste on heat-struck streets.
Clocks gnaw at hours, hands claw and plead,
As shadows swallow—yet no one is freed.

The ambulance wails, a scarlet cry,
A name dissolves beneath the sky.
Then sirens kneel—like Moses’ sea—
For the gilded king in his parade of need.

Life: a joke half the world misreads.
Some suffocate in stillness, some in speed.
One fossils in comfort, dull, confined,
The other grins—"This blood is mine."

"I am the wound before the scar,
The ghost who haunts the dark, unbarred.
Let them steal my stolen fire—
If one spark lives, I’ll strangle the pyre."*

Oh, the shortcut’s snare! The cursed race—
Tills, bazaars, the smog-choked chase
Of roads that coil like vipers sprung,
Where Death drips lullabies from his tongue.

Life smirks: "You kiss the phantom ‘near,’
Yet every breath buys you a year.
Here’s your shortcut—etched in bone—
A grave’s first step to call your own."*