Prison

Here, the beat of time
a darkened broken rhyme.
Night in night out
life’s cadence, pained-a quiet shout.
Tears can’t fall hind rows of wired wall
lives frozen . . . a timeless crawl.

Broken, wasted, lost-
boundless senseless cost.
Endless gnawing pain
it’s cadence matched by thin hope’s drain.

Tattered, torn so much the journey’s pawn.
Days come . . . they go.
Tick by tick the clock moves
yet so slow.
Too numb, too bleak to care
if hope is ever near.

It’s not.
Can this be but hell’s searing lot ?