Aching, breaking
20,000 leagues beneath the sea, you now find yourself shaking.
And the pain, it is buried so very deep
You think you could glimpse the opening to Hades.
So why not stop to ponder what became of all that childhood wonder
And before you finally go under, recall the manifold wonders
That the child within you glimpsed with each unique unfolding day –
It was knocked from you, shaken out of you:
The hard ruler thwacked upon the desk; the calloused hand that cuffed your head … all of it inevitably led
To
A late card
A lanyard
A back yard
… A graveyard
But it doesn’t have to be this way my sleeping brave
That child who dreamt of wonders never truly went away
He’s been sat in extended detention staring out upon the rain all these blasted, wasted days
Smiling defiantly, waiting patiently for this, the day that you inevitably awake again
-So awake again
And acknowledge the dull convention that held your child in suspended animation
All these very many years
-recall the tailored hopes and fears that steered you upon this path of aspiration
All that vile accumulation of stifling convention
Now let those dimly-lit and narrow days just simply wilt and fall away

Lay down your daily paper and incline your face up towards the sun
And allow the child to mingle with the man you have become.
Be a child once more my son
And you may rise with the grace of a brace of golden angels once again.

Spiralling; entwining; in the endless space between the margins.
Dipping and swooping, joyously, carelessly loop-the-looping
Through skies and heavens never ending
You feel the glory of your golden child for evermore ascending