Silence...
Silence...
Waiting...

-A banshee scream-

Joyless laughter
The kind that stems
From quiet cruelty
And unnoticed pain

Heat,
Wretched heat,
Like a wool blanket over your head.
Suffocating.
Jammed corridors.
Endlessly, endlessly moving
Swarming
Crying
Calling
Screaming

They won't look in each others' eyes.
Recognition
They fear the recognition
Someone might know, if they look in their eyes,
The fear
Pain
Guilt
Loss
Despair
Snakes, all of them,
Every one.
They might strike
Strike at weakness.
-STRIKE BACK-
But don't let them know.

They fear the intimacy of human contact.
So they pretend.
They don't smile
Or greet
They look at the wall
Down the hall
At anything
Anything that cannot see them
Cannot recognize.
No recognition.

And they go on
shuffling
swarming
screaming
Singled and Isolated.
One purpose.
Fearing human love,
Love which is so confused in listlessness.
And we go on
Despising all that we are.