Slaves To the Game
by Michael Doyle

I might need another look.
But I'm not sure,
That life is as good as the book.
It's more something we endure.

A few more steps down the wrong road,
We're still waiting for the good plot to unfold.
I was cleaning my attic and looking to find,
The childhood stolen that I had left behind.

In a place in my soul, no light enters,
It's in this darkness that my truth centers.
I do my best to keep all others from my secrecy.
This is where I keep my life's truth and history.

Diamond amnesia sparkles just the same.
It's incandescent as it glows under any other name.
In a sign of the age, we are born afraid,
From our eyes pours a sadness ready-made.

It might have been better to live invisible.
I suppose we would have, if we had been capable.
Slaves of the empire's machine, we played.
Our positions are given as if we'd willingly stayed.

In a place in my soul, no light enters,
It's in this darkness that my truth centers.
I do my best to keep all others from my secrecy.
This is where I keep my life's truth and history.

Whisper has it that it's the way of intelligence.
But I'd swear it's sheerly our shared resilience.
Somewhere, life taught us to live with tenacity.
It must have been when it wounded our integrity.

Gifted with damnation, I inhale my despair,
Stuck in the depths of the arcane, there is nothing there.
There's nothing left for me but an open grave,
I'll fight to my peace through the path that I pave.

In a place in my soul, no light enters,
It's in this darkness that my truth centers.
I do my best to keep all others from my secrecy.
This is where I keep my life's truth and history.

(c) February 19, 2026   Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved