The Cage

The outside was brightly painted,
adorned with cheery slogans,
inspirational memes.
Inside was dark and dank,
with an acrid smell
that spoke of captivity,
and pain.

Outside the sun shone
with the insistence 
of a Norman Rockwell painting,
and the joy of an ice-cream van;
bright memories
of a kinder, happier time
of swimming holes and dusty roads.

The captive stalked and grumbled,
biting his chains in angry futility,
and clawing at the steel bars.
People came, paused, pointed,
and poked at him with pointed sticks,
as they called him by the myriad names
of the Demon.

The moon, his faithful and only friend,
came to visit one evening,
with heat lightening on a dark horizon.
Ozone crackled as the bars melted
to the sound of an arcane lament,
and he stepped out
into a changed and different world.

He adapted, and learned the language
of networking and power-dressing.
Master of the easy smile
he was sought for his insight,
for his erudition, for his charm.
Alone, however, at day’s end,
he remembered the cage, and cried.