Survivor, Generation Y (Dreamland)

We used to dream in color, shades of gleam

The gold, the teal, the mauve, the green, the green

and all at once the hues would deliquesce

into their bursts of light, to bursts of gleam

to shards of spark that shone like flecks of py-

rite, like the kind I'd found once all those years

ago, between the loam that lined the banks

along the creek, the creek that purled, the creek

that ran with bursts of gleam behind your house.

In woods uncharted, woods still filled with light.

We stand here now, the last of us that dream

upon a plain of ashes, stretch of sky

that sags with grey, that sags with chronic ache

of time, of broken spark, of blinding dull.

The Eastern hills had known no binding pall

The Eastern sky had known no binding pall

But now we watch, with eyes as glazed as wind-

dows choked with fog, the mist drops rolling al-

ways slower, always slower, down and down.

But now we watch the shroud. But now we dream

in ashes, now we think in clockwork wan

So would you know, oh would you know of all

the things you'd felt before. Of all the things

you knew of warmth and shafts of light that beamed

through canopies of woods uncharted, all

the life inside you brimming gold and green.

Or have they been erased as well, for what

with use would one be found to make at all

with shades of gleam, with shades of gold and green,

in fields of ash. In fields of black machines.

The crops have died. The clock's your God now, boy.

You would not know, you would not know, you would

not know, child, down the hill where cinders burn.

So find me, seek me, if you wish to hear

the last of what I can recall of sight.

of mind, of heat, of mauve and teal and sky.

For I am old beyond what I'd have been.

If I'd been let to dream, if I'd been let

To wander where the trees still grew in light.

Not bound by method, bound by binding pall

You would not know, you would not know, you would

not know when all you've ever seen is grey