Home is where the heart
breaks.    (fall into bed)
Familiar smells entrance
and lull, the warm
hearth of embraces
shushes    (a murmuring wellspring)
where spirit fails,
soul and body crumpled up like
scratch paper.

Hemmed in by excess
of Self, persona
blind to its orchestral
shadow,    (wrought by irony)
the mind scribbles
and raves unrepentant.

       (subtlety aches for
       skillful instrumentation
                to give it breath)

Singing the pain
of ages past to mourn
these harrowing visions

Beating on in leaden
veins to the lurch of a pulse
    (the crows take cackling flight)
         time the river pours off

The edge of the map.