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"Cages"

Born with fists before he learned to pray,
Raised where the cold steel sky never gave way,
A boy became a soldier in streets without kings,
Wearing his sorrow like blood in his rings.

Dreams?
He buried them young, beneath broken glass,
Each shard a whisper of a future he’d never pass.
He carried the weight in his gun, in his name,
Built a kingdom of fear, but he hated the fame.

Time scraped him down to a hollowed-out bone,
A throne of regrets, a heart overgrown.
He wanted — he ached — for a clean, different page,
To pour out the venom, to climb from his cage.

But loneliness curled in his lungs like smoke,
Every hand that reached was another cruel joke.
Brothers who spoke of honor and trust,
Turned to dust when the bullets discussed.

The world kept moving, and he stayed still,
A ghost in sneakers, a blade without will.
He tried to imagine a life without chains,
But found only silence wrapped tight 'round his brain.

In the end, it wasn’t the law, or the fight,
That crushed his wings and stole his flight.
It was the loneliness, bitter and plain —
A king of the ruins, drowning in rain.

And somewhere, beneath his iron disguise,
A small, broken boy still opened his eyes,
Dreaming that maybe, beyond all the pain,
There was a door.
But he couldn’t find it
alone
in the rain

By. Clint McIntosh