Edgefeeders: Overfed and Starving

The effect on an entire society that is pushing the edges of the possible in order to get a competitive edge at the cutting edge, is to force everyone inside it to push themselves to their own edges.  The evacuation of the psychological centre gives everyone a common consciousness.  They are all ‘edgy’.

People on the edge have all,
in some respects,
been weakened
by being there
for the longer haul.
 
Its fast forwarders
never manage more
than scrape the shine
to skate and scratch
their time
upon the surface
of their existential all.
 
Their greatest substance
is colour dazling bright
to cover movement
by sleight of hand
just out of sight,
so that the observer
never knows just quite
where it is they stand.

No matter what they grasp,
it is a ephemeral
and vanity
that tests the very bounds
of sanity.
as they drill in time to pipers
Dirging tunes for lemming lockstep
til there are no longer marchers
or their sounds
           
No matter how great
they scrounge
to make ends meet 
so famished hungry
are they
they'd vacuum half a city block
for mains,
the other half for sweet.

They have plenty more to sell,
but little left to give.     
Creditors come first in line
and their extrordinary needs
come second each time
until there isn't even a dime
to throw in the hat
of the man outside
who begs in the street.

Their power's so great
there is no cure.
It multiplies
without control
within their flesh,
consuming always more
and ever edging out
what's left that's fresh,
leaving nothing wholesome
for fertile compost
or good manure.
 
Restlessness and discontent
sleep by their side
like old and trusted lovers
infecting all their intimates
with their disease 
that renders all their contacts
to such miserable construction,
under serviced, 
worn quickly out
and with a practiced ease
thrown away
to their destruction.
 
The closest most of them
can ever find
to happiness
are paid for fun and pleasures
sometimes darkened
with subterranean measures
that turn others
into cyphers
within fantasies
inside game plans
in their mind.

Death threatens to annihilate
this puffed and fragile self
to carrion's fate
as absurd
as it is obscene,
and no amount of wealth
and tech
is too great to try
to stall
that final wreck,
for nothing left
is nothing been.