Black Roof Country

Welcome to Black Roof Country.

This suburban world seems prim;

Behind the veil lies something grim,

A place where mental light grows dim.

Welcome to the world of Black Roof Country.

 

In better days

Suburbia shone fine.

Blue sky, bright sun,

The world alive with color.

Nowadays the suburban world

Is rife of dead colors.

The country grew dull

With drab paints covering brick walls.

Where there exists no primer

Concrete walls bear cracks.

Such is the world of Black Roof Country.

 

Gray covers the once blue sky

Over masses of concrete gray.

Sidewalk white has become sidewalk gray

While broken roads stay broken

As gray smothers its surface.

Brick red cracks under the wear

Imposed by Gray’s tyranny.

The green of leaf, the bark of brown,

Vivid to drab to dull to gray.

And everyday Gray grows grayer.

Such is the world of Black Roof Country.

 

The people were once energetic,

Together in harmony.

Today, the Gray has stolen away

The souls of the citizens.

Their eyes have dulled with

The ever-dulling world around them.

Their energies stripped as well,

Forging darker, blander grays

For the Gray to silently impose,

For the Gray to creep.

These are the people of Black Roof Country.

 

Living in quiet desperation,

Ignorant of the outside world

Beyond the black-roofed homes.

They could never dream

Of a better place to live.

The Gray seized those dreams years ago.

These citizens have surrendered to Gray,

Resigning themselves to dreariness,

Consigning themselves to life without color,

Condemning themselves to lives not worth examining.

 

Such is the world

and the people

of Black Roof Country.

Reviews

[Sarah J. Kelleher]

There's a lot of ways this could go, according to how the reader views it. As for me, the more I think about, the more my brain starts to hurt. But that's a good thing, (at least in my opinion,) because that means that there is a TON of depth to this piece. When I think about the Gray, (and I love how it's personified) my first thought was of the second "Halloweentown" movie. (It's a movie from my childhood, yup.) There's this spell called "the gray spell" and it turns everything in Halloweentown from being unique and full of life and character into being dull and dreary and well, gray. Then I thought about what the Gray represented... and that's where my brain started to hurt, because the first thing that popped into my head was politics. Now frankly, I hate politics. But I thought about whether it could be repercussions from... oh, let's say a dictatorship. Or a monarchy. I thought about the gray spell again, in a more professional way. (If it could go that way...) And the more I read the lines over, the more I thought that I would not want to live there. The citizens have surrendered all uniqueness and individuality, it kind of makes me sad.

All in all, great write.

[D. Snyder]

Also great. I like it quite a bit. Your personification of gray is resoundingly fitting, even appropriate. It sounds like an argument against capitalism; but then I am more than slightly biased.