Life as a Cage

Heart rings, jangles and cries

an olde alarm clock, jarring you alive

body like a cage, a torso of bars,

alarm clanking against the sides

Twisting funnel for your mind-hole

The thoughts drip into your ears

the words twisting through the tubes

thick dribble of notions tangles on the way

spouting free out of open mouthes

Butterflies trapped in the cage of your body

fluttering against the walls, the bars

You're alone inside, rattling the cage

the limbs make their way through time

taking you from place to place

transporting you through phases and days

Strings grow from your crown, and face

trimmed and cut to standards of another

Skin cloaks your cage, decent-like

empty glass orbs filled with a potion

a liquid iris to glance about this dim world

to color it less grey, to go about the day

You meet another cage, many caged ones

alarm hearts clanging as loudly as your own

Twisted garble words make lame conversation

pained entertainment you can't escape

a captive audience you've been made

Caged masses opiated to caffeinated captivity

Drifting, through loveless, mindless days

Numbed lives as empty as a broken stage

A performance gone down, turned sour

Minds not set free, alarm hearts winding down

ticking last moments through caged suburbia

© copyright by Michèle Aimée Lahaie, 2010

Contrast.

Round my heart flits
circling it goes, dizzy in one place
with what was pre-supposed
Prithee what is it's nature?
Flighty as it be, yet steady
fleeting, tho loyal it be
Why does it behave uncontrollably?
Why so dragging, yet abrupt?
How so lazy, and diligent at once?
So discouraged, and ambitious
all at once, and never at all.

Such promise! potential galore
yet trapped in a place, trapped
behind a face, streaming, hurting
broken by fate, alive in every way.
Life escaped, dripped from fingers
Milk trapped in a drain, nowhere goes
Or words of a refrain I never know
An ocean of noise in seas of silence
What is this life? broken like birth
Brimming with potential, ever-moving
facing a dead end, with no end in sight.

How be this nature of things, unbroken
a contradiction of life, yea, of breath!
the stillness of dance, hurried breath of sleep
the noiselessness of a pounding pulse
the love that could never love at all
an embrace that conveys no emotion
a kiss the lips never felt touch at all
It is the energy that turned to lethargy,
the starting sluggish longing to live full life
It is the new warmth to melt a frozen heart,
to ignite the courage of those most afraid.

© copyright by Michèle Aimée Lahaie, 2010

Long-Distance Lovers' Airwaves

Distance proves itself in swings,
swills of mood, and highs and low
emotions flying through airwaves
some met, some flying past another
unfortunate enough to disconnect

So fault flies and blame is passed
like drinks from one to another
Neurotic moments taken like hits
and ups and downs get harder
with time and space. Breaking
and repairing, distance is unjust

Tensions run high, moods parallel,
but never at the same time, left
and then picked up once discarded,
emotions and rhetoric's ruts run through
repetitively, till habits become tired
tired of themselves, clawing for change

Humor lost to airwaves where faces
have gone missing, and body language
cannot tell what it was meant to speak
Sound has dropped a curtain on wry,
sardonic speech and smirking smiles,
giggling eyes all a-sparkle go unseen

Annoyed indignation, dim hearts, aching ears
the thought of wrongs that can't be righted without
soft touches, the smiles that go unseen, that can forgive
Those soft, unspoken moments are lost as lovers
separated by minutes, miles, cope with long days away

© copyright by Michèle Aimée Lahaie, 2010