Purposely oblique,
My heart and mind seek
Love.

Purposely oblique,
My heart and mind wreak
Havoc.

Purposely oblique,
My heart and mind bespeak
Understanding.

Purposely oblique,
My heart and mind critique
Everything.

Wracking--
Body and mind;
Emotions fly
High
On confusion.

Adrenaline:
Physically slowed;
Psychically blown
Out of the sky
By commotion.

The lid is opened and
I spring forth, twirling
And spinning to the sound of
Dainty music in the background.
My dance is cut short, the lid is shut.
The bauble is chosen.

Glass eyes follow you around the room.
A cuckoo clock sounds midnight.
Terror fills you and you
Wake to shadows.

A crystalline echo
Reverberates off the canyon walls.
No one hears the screams.

The acrobat on the tightrope
Teeters with each step.
There is no net.
The crowd gasps.

An incandescent butterfly
Flutters over a log in the twilight.
A night owl swoops from on high
And devours it as day gives way to night.
The meadow is silent.

Stranded in asylum
Chasing sanity
(Succumbing to madness)
Straddling the was and what will be--
Marooned in a stalwart furor.
Outlandish nostalgia for a time unknowable,
Longing for an untarnished future.
Nothing will be as it was:
Vinyl records sound perfect discord,
Pops and cracks inharmonious to
Wishes on stars that will never be.

Face to Face with
Anger and Discouragement.
Constantly rejected,
Fueling rage.
The cycle continues--
             Eruption.
             Calm.
Then--
             A fissure.
             Pressure.
             BOOM!
Destruction is at hand.

Your words--
They grate and corrode.
Rice and birds--
Explode.

Rage wells,
It overflows.
No more silent spells,
We're grown.

A harrowed frenzy
Ghosting through halls,
Memorizing nonsensical miscellany.
Exhaustion reigns supreme.