Hallucinated Realities 1: Trapped Pigeon - Andrew Barham

The toxic fungus
Devouring
The heart of our soul;
Humanity,
A fading dream
Hallucinated realities –
Psychotropic distemper –
Wither goeth wir
Racing through the shadows
Of our lost world?

The grey gull alights:

Crows gathering …
A pigeon
Caught in a forgotten wire
Dependent
From the corrugated roof
Of a rusting shed;

The seagull …

How the twitchers twitch
And shudder
Whenever we
(In our ignorance)
Call them
"Seagulls" –

The great grey gull

With perpetually frowning eyes
Trying to catch
A stuck pigeon
While the crows watch
Waiting …

Every time
The upside-down pigeon tries to fly
Away
Held fast
By the wire
Snared round its leg

Accidental death
Incidental death

It matters not which
To the Trapped Pigeon
Or the other birds
Tempted by
An easy meal …

Andrew Barham

This is part of a series of "Hallucinated Reality" poems in which the title is actually imbedded within the poem. Thus, these poems are titled, but the title does not appear at the top, but somewhere within the poem.