Cell

Salt wet eyes, with darting gaze

A solo head rises above a solemn crowd bowed in hungry prayer 

Blinking. Awakening is dangerous thinking. 

With trembling talons he grasps his addiction

These milliseconds of abstinence rake at the flesh

Threatening eons in a soundless desert

Solace is sought by his hunching brethren

Huddled tightly – yet strangely apart – on barren branches

With calloused necks scorched by an unobserved sun 

In this wasteland of sand

Better to cower and curl 

To focus down on stripping sinews from shiny fistfuls

What need flight when skies are in hand?

Offering libraries of faces, tumbling graces 

Instant grams from fluttering fans

Sustenance comes from those handheld guns

Through cultural cracks and carrion scraps.

“Where once we soared, we seek only to score.”

A squawk!  A tremoring flutter. 

Time’s up. Eyes down.

His dealer calls a loveless echo.  

He bows his head among the humpbacked volt. 

Vultures with vices

On cells of glass they prey.