Sour, my attempt to write –
the flavour lost in every bite.
Undecided words, unheard,
but seeping out, expelled,
disturbed; a self-invaded,
cornered bird, un-winged
and clipped from flight,
while

I rumble with poetic temper,
my bleeding soul,
in part, dismembered;
blank, un-whole, alone
and undefended.
My belly full of passion,
yet, my appetite untended,
and

expression jailed and flawed,
dissolving quicker than it pours;
a vat of garbled, bubbling
troubled thought
that rivals typed impression
sought to pillage mind
and spill from core.

Scored, the days it takes between,
in floor and wall,
to key the lock that binds
this isolation door,
ancient finds arising
in my lust for seeking more
and more;
buried words upended
with surprise, and unintended,
for,

from I, the Jailor,
baseless accusations rise,
lashing, fast, acidic wind
that primes the rhymes I tongue within.
Never one to coat my words
too thin, too dry, too weak,
it seems (by definition) I resist
to drown (at best) or leak,
while anchored here, existing,
in unblinking frozen speech,
but

the accidental draining of my
purpose-tended bed of prose,
is waiting hand on foot
with sweetened
suicidal pensive throes,
as I,
with mocking rows
and rows of written doubt,
release, in lines,
my stomach
churning through and out
demands to hasten
one true last and final shout,
so,

this filtered care
that stains my lungs with ghostly stare
and soaks my throat
as vomitous
as stinging air
that leaves me rendered,
flailed and flared and wounded,
brooding, undeclared –
through THIS
the words escape,
an icing on the freedom cake
all cherry-topped, and cut, and baked:
a timeless meal to share
without the food to waste,
the friend to taste,
the key to exit,
smitten,
from this solitary mind-induced
persisting empty prison space.