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Caged birds dream of tasting clouds

and soaring above hasting crowds.

Magnolia walls trap Southern promise

I’ll clip my wings for another’s solace.

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Metal struts; horizontal sorrow,

beaming the echo of glottal morose.

The rise and fall of neck and seed;

the emptiness, the peck and plead.

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A flighty notion hungers inside;

a prison of another’s design.

Resistance unfed; futility;

no fight, bereft, flightless.

Brain dead, drained, lifeless;

for we bred in captivity.

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