Rib Cage

You cannot escape
from an unwalled prison
Bracketed by horizons
and the joke of freedom
All hopes decieve you
in an unwalled prison.

The strongest walls
can be chipped over time
Into a tunnel carved by days
a long walk to a new dawn

But the body that contains you
is a hungry fragile pawn
in an endless aimless game
Played out on an unmowed lawn

No rules and the board is bent
and buckled and the pieces
Are lost along the way by contented
children who pull faces

At the vanquished who smile
Spiked on the city gates
While fate's hands tick inside
the rotten sinking sun

Numbered days are done
and undone, the eternal
present tethered to our eyes
a chain of memorials

The shackles of sighs
Too many greetings
Far too many goodbyes
These things are fleeting

The rest are lies
The meat of your meetings
is picked over by flies
and eaten by worms

Who crawling blind
tongueless in unison
Labour to remind -

You cannot escape
an unwalled prison.