Junk Kings and Cardboard Thrones - Poem

 Junk Kings and Cardboard Thrones

They strut through aisles of plastic dreams,
Chasing status in LED gleams.
The rich stack gadgets ceiling high,
The poor buy knockoffs, still they try.

“Look at me,” cries the showroom saint,
“Behold my junk, admire, don’t faint!”
He bathes in wealth like oil and gold,
Then brags he wipes with bills he folds.

The poor man glares with calloused hands,
Pays cash for goods from secondhand.
He buys it once, it lasts him long—
He knows what’s cheap, and what is strong.

But still the circus never ends,
Each trinket breaks, each trend offends.
The landfill groans beneath the weight
Of trophies bought to satiate.

For none escape the rust and rot,
Not yachts, nor phones, nor parking lots.
The closets brim with last year’s style—
The corpse of fashion in a pile.

In branded rags they puff their chests,
Their minds are junk, their hearts unrest.
They hoard as if they'll never die,
As if their piles will help them fly.

A pyramid of useless things—
A hollow crown, a cage with wings.
The debt runs deep, the hours are sold,
For plastic dreams and coats of gold.

Abandoned barns, forgotten malls,
Reverberate with ghostly calls:
"All this, for what?" the walls confess—
The trophies mock their past excess.

For junk can't fill a soul-starved pit,
And all the wealth still can't outwit
The still small truth in humble breath:
That life is not a race to death.

Part Two: The Empty Android

And if you cheat the grave’s embrace,
And upload thought into a case—
Will you not find, in metal womb,
A colder kind of silent tomb?

An android built to carry mind,
To digitize the soul and bind—
But soul is more than code or spark,
It breathes in love, it dies in dark.

Oh, rich man dreaming cyber dreams,
You chase eternity in beams.
But what is life without decay?
Without the dawn that fades to grey?

Can circuits mourn? Can chrome forgive?
What meaning has a life that must live?
Without the fear, the breath, the ache—
What proof remains that you’re awake?

You are no god, no child of light—
You’re just a glitch in endless night.
The soul has fled, it would not stay,
It longs for skies, not steel and clay.

And somewhere past the stars and flame,
A heaven waits, unbought, unnamed.
Where immortality is gift,
Not theft of time, nor code’s cruel trick.

The android howls, alone, aware—
Its master’s soul is never there.
What fool believes the form remains,
When love has leaked from metal veins?

No grave, no heaven, just a cage—
An endless loop of silent rage.
The junk they hoarded now decays—
And they remain...

In counterfeit praise.