What are you gonna do

with this freedom once you get it?

Will the fire in your belly be snuffed out?

Resolved to exist as a rueful automaton

A roof over your head and food in your stomach

You may become listless, apathetic, unmotivated

What are you gonna do

when you’re completely content?

As struggling through your days

becomes a thing of the past

Dying by the emptiness of your fallen convictions

You’re dispiriting passion curdles

A clipped tree, a lonely stump, now inhuman

Will you sing the praises of those that saved you?

Will you kiss their rings and bow to their altar?

Your penchant for nurturing your own vitality wanes

Possessing a now sedentary body

Unfurled on a mattress, atrophied legs outstretched

TV blares as you witness no more atrocity

But the media continues to twist and contort

Lies broadcast globally

Did you just trade in for a different kind of misery?

Swapping sides for another form of anxiety?

You are the purveyor of ignorance

Recipient of a recalculation

As the bill always comes due

Time to pay your tab

Clock out from a gut-wrenching job

Tell your boss to screw off and take a hike

As you lay there and soak in your skin

You are reminded of the days where hard-won

battles gave you purpose

As your own internalized war blooms

Douglas G. Cala is a spoken word performance poet, photographer/videographer and editor from New York. Getting his start on the cafe open mic circuit in the mid 2000s, Douglas has gone on to headline a variety of venues around the East Coast. These include feature showcases at The Cutting Room, Metropolitan Room, NJPAC, Brooklyn College, Manhattanville College, Columbia University, Bowery Poetry Club, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Busboys and Poets, the IMPerfect Gallery, Cornelia Street Cafe, Sidewalk Cafe, Parkside Lounge, New York Public Library, and the New York City Poetry Festival on Governors Island, among many others.