That night, my eyes paraded along beige pages
Dripping with satire, self-loathing and daddy issues
And I felt the cynic in me dance like a madman
Who had just snapped the neck of a baby bird
Cruel and unsympathetic, but dancing all the same

And then my eyes met a string of printed black shapes
Which halted me, though lukewarm in comparison
To its sibling pushes of ink, jeering and suicidal

The shapes read,
“People don't want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messes cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.”

It was something I'd touched several times before
But denied myself to hold on to
I would catch it like a leaf in the wind
Then my eyes would cross its black spots
And I would let it go, brushing my hands of it

But that night, in my madman craze and my sneering laughter,
I felt the familiar bother of a leaf orbiting my skull
And my eyeball parade froze and my madman feet could dance no more
So I lay there until I felt the sun blush and heard the birds begin to sing
For it was not one of their own laying still, plagued by demise