Song of the Almost Dead

Your eyes rise,
traveling up the walls around you,
the walls built by strangers and lovers alike,
beautiful, perfect edifices
that hold you like a caged bird,
fluttering, singing
a song no one hears,
a foreign language perhaps,
a song that refuses to be trapped,
refuses to be ignored.

Yes.
Refuses.

There is joy in you,
a power,
and the cage can not hold it,
the silence will not still it.
It rises, it’s caged passion not dimmed,
but growing, alive, sometimes angry,
sometimes defiant and broken,
sometimes nearly silenced,
but never quite,
a thing alive,
stronger,
oh yes, much stronger,
than the torturous death by neglect.

About this poem

I cannot even begin to tell you how many people this poem is about and to. I would name them except they would be embarrassed at my admiration for their courage. It is their song, and mine too, at times.

Tom