The Terrible Screeching Of Parakeets Poem by Patrick L Kalahar

The terrible screeching of parakeets
Beaks scraping on bars
The sad flutter of clipped wings
That pound the stale air
With desperate futility
Inmates in once-colorful uniforms
Now ragged and torn in self-mutilation
Held in gilded cages, plated in fools' gold
Rusted and blackened with excrement
They who were born to fly
And perch on branches
Heavy with exotic fruits
Now confined and sentenced
For unknown crimes
Their only hope and only solace
Is death—the final commutation