Shadows circle their captors without ever finding an exit. There isn't really a way out, but it's never stopped me from searching. I live under puddles of rainwater and in window reflections. Everything's backwards, so it makes more sense. Here time is slowed down and no one ever leaves. You never have to feel too much and not enough all at once. Your train of thought can be traced and you can always find your way back to the place you started. I don't know where I belong, if anywhere at all, but I have found a temporary home where I can rest my bones. I won't come up for air until I have to.

Just pretend that you don't know me

And I'll just pretend too
That I don't have feelings for you

©IGMS

curled up in a corner
of a room you will find me
bent
but not broken and spent
but not spoken with spokes of the bicycle
wheel that broke off and
rolled through the liberation
gate staking
my face-plates,
now, folks,
I have warned you
I am horned and with virtue,
alone but not lonely
I'm a circus clown's pony with
plots of freak mutiny,
a ship-wrecked bronze bust of political impunity
I am star-gazing through blazes of thin paper, puny
little pinners pressed tightly by blazer pocket roomies.
I'm a goonie, a goblin and a masked, hooded robin robbing rich people's goblets of every droplet
and although I move slow I will not
ever stop it
so I sew
on the buttons after I do the popping while Millers mill about
doing holiday shopping
how sloppy
our rituals all empty and flopping
about in the wind like a limp rubber topping for
bottles of formulas filled up with tube-fed
federally-regulated hormonally-muted
undead
living piglets with noses as red as
our shred
of human dignity left after all that
we've spent.
I'm the leftovers left under every park bench.
I'm a snarling, glad monster with the truest intent
for every breath
to be free.
like my fangs and my
fur all curled up in a
corner of a room you'll find me.