Digging unexploded ordinance
on a mountain of corpses,
but the view is amazing.

A well and boiled frog, I am.
My sticky tongue ate up that scam.
Webbed toes can't swim away
The lid is closed for holiday.
Don't know what I coulda done
Nobody coulda saw that'd come.
My frog anatomy succumbed
to temperatures about a ***-
dred and seventy-three.
Which is the perfect duration to cook me.

Now that cruelty owns the day and night.
My shame is for my petty plights.
I spent this life belaboring,
savoring my productivity.
Creatively struggling just to be
a member of society.
Why they didn't tell me
it was an elaborate joke?
Those who have will have some more,  
but the rest of the poor folk...?

On the way back from the abyss,
the dramatist starts and fits,
"Put me back in the black again,"
with squeezed fists and limp wrists.

The darling's staple diet of bad news,
black coffee and sweet candy
kept their spirit sickly.
Obviously.

Exposed to blaring overcast,
the dramatist retracts,
surprisingly intact.
In fact stronger than before
now in their validation.

Returned to comfy pit,
went the dramatist.
For the pit inhibits
in consistency.
No new delights,
or flights of fancy.
Not to be caught
between what's seen
with eyes shut,
or what they see.

The dramatist,
in the blackened emptiness,
will never know
when they've passed the horizon.

I began,
petty, indulgent,
with a dream to fulfil.
Building places to hide,
to protect my child mind.
The wish, instilled
longing
with no plan.
"**** the boy,
become a man."
bound in duty
twisting enjoyment
to what task
he is unsuited.

Tonsil choked the passage.
Enamel bowed to decay.
I slept through the alarm.
The canary flew away.

"The leaky dam looks fine from here.
Just— stand right there.
Can you believe, there've been thirty accidents
since last September."

"Statistically, for this facility,
that's rather subdued.
Ignore that light. It won't stop blinking,
so we're having it removed."

A hat is made from a heart.
The marrow becomes electricity.
Streaking red blood and bone.
Fortune's tenacity.

"Well, so long.
Arrivederci.
This ending was foretold
—quite early."