Revisionist Poetry – “False Oasis” – Diving Through the Grey, v.3

Under glass ceilings and neon light the crowd arranges itself,
priced shoes stepping past palms potted into ordered sorrow.
They built a rain for sale: a waterfall in a shopping cathedral,
spray recirculated like a promise on a loop.

Bronze divers, lacquered and preordained, tumble toward a tiled mouth;
they never break the surface—only the illusion does.
The water’s voice is loud enough to drown the adverts;
it sings in a language that costs the same as a cardigan.

We drink harsh coffee, taste the thin sugar of waiting,
count the seconds by the flight of a child’s balloon.
The mall breathes profit and conditioned calm; the waterfall answers back
in a neat, mechanical hush: buy, gaze, move on.

The oasis is an advertisement for rest. We step into its picture,
pose our untroubled faces, and remember how to be still — for a fee.