They always told me of my pneuma,
This creative spirit,
Capable of conquering nations or liberating the unjustly incarcerated
Unearthing fabled, folkloric myths,
With all the pummels I’d expect a brain cyst—
Still, he trudges on,
Like a scapegoat in its farcical, ineffable glee—
Why are you telling me
To manufacture and market my life
Like an indulgent, indulged on swine
Conforming to the convention,
Supporting units of straight edges

What in this straight-edged maelstrom
Can help the creative pneuma
To thrive in a place so confining and restricting
And detrimental to discoveries, breakthroughs,
Spiritual sustenance?

I never look back on my art. Reminds me of my failures.

The fall might pour into the river,
Water at the bank in its length,
Yet whatever fine trouble arouses
Don’t ever ask why, through it all

My loved ones, they never showed care in the dark
Much like my colleagues to me,
Like a tree in the rain,
I hold out in such vain
Because I never question nature or its reasons

The tenor of my time,
In all our ambience—
Bear in mind,
Bear in time—
Please!
Don’t ever ask why.

Gently scraping the adhering paper from the firm plastic, colorful cube
That beared a delicate weight in my soft, precarious pink hands,
I grasped the sticker and pressed it on my protuberant little veins--
“Innocence!” Clarence cried my misleading appellation,
“Are you cheating? You’re taking off the stickers, mindlessly relocating them
To unravel (or reassemble, rather) the poor little tormented Rubik’s.”
*“Nay, you fool. I’m just rearranging them so that no one can solve the puzzle.
I’m a sadist, not a fraud.”

Claude Frollo—a man deeply entwined in the lies which he tragically assures himself,
possessing a self-righteous Messiah complex that he uses to assert himself and his followers—to the point of horror and tragedy