Howard Firkin
The third day that the keepers haven’t been.
Our cages now are barred and barbed with pain.
The smell of weak flesh travels like a stain
through air; meat needers rage to their obscene
desires of carnage: us. They scream with lust.
This is a place of frenzy, dream, and fear.
We look for shadows—will they come to feed
or to be fed? Left with our single need
it hardly matters which. Our fate is here,
among the faeces, dirty water, dust.

The night is falling faster than before.
The wings of night things taunt us, free to fly.
No lights patrol our pathways anymore.
We’re caged but we are stalked and we will die.