The Great Servitude

Life is labor,
and labor is the chain that binds every throat,
no matter what mask it wears.

The surgeon’s trembling hand,
the janitor sweeping filth at dawn,
the teacher reciting lessons to empty eyes,
the farmer bent beneath a sun that scorches more than it feeds,
the lawyer sharpening words into weapons,
the soldier carrying death in his shadow—
all are shackled alike.

The actor who smiles for applause,
the writer who bleeds into pages no one will read,
the factory hand crushed by machines,
the nurse stitched together by caffeine and grief,
the priest who whispers hope he no longer believes,
the king drowning in gold that cannot quiet the void—
all, slaves.

Different uniforms,
different wages,
the same decay.
Each role another mask upon the same skull.

Philosophy promises meaning—
but what meaning lies in selling every hour
to purchase another day of hunger?
Religion offers reward—
but the afterlife is built upon the bones of those
who were too exhausted to ask questions.
Psychology calls it necessity, adaptation—
but even adaptation is survival,
and survival is not life,
only the prolonging of death.

We work until our bodies fail,
and if fortune does not kill us early,
retirement comes—
a cruel jest.
Too frail to travel,
too weary to rejoice,
too broke to live.
A pittance given back by the masters
after decades of servitude.
Freedom arrives when the body
can no longer taste it.

The painter’s hands tremble,
the builder’s spine cracks,
the singer’s voice fails,
the miner coughs blood,
the driver nods into the abyss of exhaustion.
The grave takes all trades alike,
its soil indifferent to what uniform rotted above it.

And the final insult:
all this striving,
all this sacrifice,
all these years bent beneath invisible whips—
forgotten.
The office worker who gave thirty years.
The farmer who starved so others could eat.
The mother who stitched her life into endless toil.
Their names dissolve like chalk in rain.

This is the true monotony:
to labor as shadows in a world
that eats us alive
and thanks us with silence.

We are modern slaves,
but the lash is time,
the overseer is debt,
the plantation is the world.
And when death comes—
the only freedom—
the soil will not know our names.
The universe will not mourn.
The silence will swallow all.