You open your mouth and fists fly out,
in repetition you let it flap like trout.
Lay your love on a bed of nails,
and gleam with glee the formation of your scales.
Pause your thought for that train has taken you adrift
Pause your dreams for the sleepy ones will not agree
Pause your tongue for its slamming rage has led you from a mothers love.
Freedom found me in my cage
and now like ecstasy
creeps up and down my neck
and the sweat!
The endless sweat!
That drips from my brow as pearls
mocking the tamed and lame children.
Stretching and reaching to feel real,
to descend at last into the manic panic.
To cast off the joy and divinity of youth
and instead commit ourselves to the asylum of living.
To accept the madness and sadness
as necessitates on a quest for love.

Don’t waste your pity on the broken ones,
their cuts are not yours to plaster.
Find solace that life is not a line
that you should act or learn.
It hides in us all that burning, churning,
that sullied broken ground,
that hot slopping metal that covers my chest,
squeezes life from my breast!
How can we draw comfort,
when all artistic talent has left us?
Where do we place our dreams,
when the waking hours are nightmares?
When god is dead,
who holds the keys to heaven?