It’s an understanding that one caged thing has for another.
A trembling longing that a coloured creature of light and flight has
When confined to bitter filth and darkness.
Under boulders of bureaucracy
A desk can hurt like falling timber
Hands don’t need picks and hammers to break just the same
Micro or macro, fleece, feather or filestore
Through frost, fire or fluorescence,
Stockholm gifts us the pain for a false friend.
We may think we’re the tiny soaring raptor
But shiny in the sun, stretched or soiled
We’re heading for the ash-bottomed, battered grey bin.
I was always the canary in the coalmine of my own dreams.
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Stephen A. Linstead
Image credit: Billy Casper (David Bradley) discovers Kes killed by his brother, Jud. Still edited from broadcast Kes (1969) dir. Ken Loach prod. Tony Garnett cinematography Chris Menges. Kestrel Films/Woodhall Films.
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