Itch and Sack

You are a cog in a machine
even if you don’t identify it or you as such.
Most men prepare for days that never come.
And I was sitting and staring out onto the sea. It was black.
It once turned black and it
never became blue again.
An old man once told me a story
he had heard from his father
– a warning,
I should bother, he assured me.
It will turn red one day.
After telling me,
he descended down into his grave.
Laid there, as I was looking down onto him.
“Proof it to me
its black, but why should it turn red…?”
“…it might as well become blue again…”
“- …and it is black.”
“It will turn red”, I heard
from a voice
laying in a hole
surrounded by dirt.
His voice weakened by
the increasing weight around his neck.
“It is your lack of oxygen
that makes you speak like that.
Why should I bother
talking with a dead man?”
“Maybe because black,
is all that there is for you,
for there were only stories
that told you
that it was once blue.
Let me sleep now.
I am exhausted,
soon you will be too.”
“Sure old man. I am going to look out
onto to the sea,
if they come to me,
these better days
they are surely also waiting for.
Sometimes it also
nice like that,
you know.”
He smiled.
Didn’t murmur another syllable.
Played
and I thought:
What a fool,
shouldn’t compare me to you,
what you don’t know
my determination to do the right thing will be incredible.
I am different than you.
Before Red, Black or even Blue.