Christopher Withers - bound, the flesh

'see', I yell, to the gathering crowd,
but
rather than 'seeing',
each eye, slack jaw and gaping mouth
sees
me and nothing more.
caught and bound
societal thrall:
only few ever wake
if they wake at all.
and if they wake,
there they sit,
and claw and climb,
crushed by the weight
of every lifetime lived before.
age ravaged bodies, clutch
nothing but the cold.
a wasted chance,
a wasted word:
a lifetime written
before
we are even born.
to bondage born,
to bondage death,
tantalised by minds great breadth.
yet bound by rules,
bound by flesh,
fantasy, cruelly jests:
this simulacrum
made of flesh.

Christopher Withers

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/bound-the-flesh/