Third tier anesthesia
In a locked up north,
We keep the life we’re given,
Our store of words aint fled,
Belief? Empty as a music box
Providing housing for the dead;
The bridge twixt give and taking
Has crumpled into dust
And for the cowering people — wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beasties -
Survival is a must.

We struggle to talk as free folk,
We no longer dream of the new Jerusalem 
We try to stand tall,
But fear appears blinking on the brink of it all.
Will you follow orders without question? Or will you slink over the brink? Dream your heart through a lingering death? Or begin again to think?

We live with colors, music and risk our words and laughter too
This will-o’-the-wisp of skin and bone circulates in free air, not in a human zoo
Some are shielding in glimmering-bone-white-light,
Some, like me, just stutter along….
singing a song that flits from the merest echo of pitch
into the fully-fledged minor chord song of these residents of a ditch
in time saves nine.

Our longing to be free, springs on us images of crowds, gleaned from memory,
we flutter with those who are plucked away today. the next day
we gaze into fire
take on the mantle of silence,
time passes us by,
tumbles us
into the sprinkling gyre
which lights up
our flaming northern sky.