It’s not the answer to your prayers

It’s the remedy for your fears

It’s prison, not to put too fine a point on it

There are guards and wardens, but we erect the bars with them,
whistling while we work.

They glide among us, pretending to be something apart

But they are trapped with us just the same,
just trapped with room service
or with the dream of room service, or, perhaps even more luxuriant,
the chance to practice the
dark art of despise.

There are those elsewhere who manage the profits, and those who dance like funny ghouls on top that they horror and titter about in the papers.

But the ones between the ghouls and the riches, no one really sees.

Discrete as butlers,
they lay waste to the seeds of life.