'see', I yell, to the gathering crowd, <br />but <br />rather than 'seeing', <br />each eye, slack jaw and gaping mouth <br />sees <br />me and nothing more. <br />caught and bound <br />societal thrall: <br />only few ever wake <br />if they wake at all. <br />and if they wake, <br />there they sit, <br />and claw and climb, <br />crushed by the weight <br />of every lifetime lived before. <br />age ravaged bodies, clutch <br />nothing but the cold. <br />a wasted chance, <br />a wasted word: <br />a lifetime written <br />before <br />we are even born. <br />to bondage born, <br />to bondage death, <br />tantalised by minds great breadth. <br />yet bound by rules, <br />bound by flesh, <br />fantasy, cruelly jests: <br />this simulacrum <br />made of flesh.<br /><br />Christopher Withers<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/bound-the-flesh/
