Standing silent and still,
Steel frame and wires,
Ominous.
A long-dead Christmas Tree,
Baubles of weathered fibreglass,
But your silence is a shroud,
You always speak, share, collect.
Staccato chirping, just beyond human ken.
Passing the fragments of sad existence,
Money, secret love, a family photo,
The blancmange of our lives.
Watching, listening,
Drip feeding the morphine of our stupor,
TV which long since broke with reality.
Carefully manicured data,
constructed for effect,
Twisting and torturing truth.
With a thousand friends,
you stand sentry,
like the guard towers in a
free-range prison.