The walls around me are high
and there is razor wire like a crown of thorns
and guards stand at the ready in their towers
with standing orders to shoot
anything that moves
on sight.

A self imposed incarceration?
Perhaps,
in the absence of alcohol
not even the wind gets through.
There is nothing to soften the edges
wheels with no grease,
a hardly surprising exile -
Napoleon's ghost in Elba and
in St. Helena
his
bones

In clarity I've discovered
there is not much poetry in the curse of man,
in the constant rising
and lying down,
the animal necessity of sustenance
and its unsavory yet inevitable
expulsion.

We may all have different talents
but we're all experts in
the ancient art of
crap.