paralytic skies
hold close their embrace
folding in
upon themselves

glaring
burning cobalt eyes

crushing
their despairing captives

whose hollow faces
drag the recalcitrant air
into the cavities
of spiritless lungs

blood and bone
test the bars
of their inherited prison
built with
walls of allegorical stone

they cast
their harrowed gaze
upward

prospecting for pay dirt
through tapped out veins
of hope
and love
in strip mined heavens