Gilded Cages (Day 814)

in what gilded cages 

they live out their lot of rosé days 

and bourbon nights  

cheeks prickling  eyes glowing 

with the satisfaction 

of another’s job 

well done

how do they silence  when they 

creep between their chambers 

late at night  all those doors 

squealing with disuse

how   in portraits  

do their artists capture the lurid 

shade of self-inflated fury

or   for sympathy  do they display 

jagged edges and disappear 

again  eyes glazed 

with fear and longing  to shelter 

in those jangling cells of luxury  

drawing close their velvet drapes 

against an inner darkness 

teeming with the fervent desires 

and untested truths 

of a feverish equatorial night

(c) 2019, by Hannah Six

Image: Evelyn De Morgan, The Gilded Cage (ca 1900 – 1919), 

oil on canvas, via Wikimedia Commons

Southern shores (Day 808)

beyond all 

measurable time-stained 

fingers brushing 

soft slick teardrops 

from your face 

you say you

find southern shores 

nurturing  tasting 

as they do 

of salted sweetness 

creamy as jonquils 

nodding in 

spring-laced groves 

and so  you go 

in ever-smaller pieces 

(c) 2019, by Hannah Six

Image: reginafloyd/Pixabay

Raising a future (Day 807)

hours crawled 

people brushed past  

raising a future

like walls around us

a labyrinth   and all 

around us 

said me too  

exclaimed we too  

into the gray 

middle distance 

of a Thursday-night 

weekend  fighting back 

the Friday morning 

rising like steam 

from subway vents 

all around us 

rushing  rushing

(c) 2019, by Hannah Six

Image: Chris Spielmann/US NIH

via Wikimedia Commons