How this **** fable instructs
And mocks! Here's the parody of that moral mousetrap
Set in the proverbs stitched on samplers
Approving chased girls who get them to a tree
And put on bark's nun-black

Habit which deflects
All amorous arrows. For to sheathe the ****** shape
In a scabbard of wood baffles pursuers,
Whether goat-thighed or god-haloed. Ever since that first Daphne
Switched her incomparable back

For a bay-tree hide, respect's
Twined to her hard limbs like ivy: the puritan lip
Cries: 'Celebrate Syrinx whose demurs
Won her the frog-colored skin, pale pith and watery
Bed of a reed. Look:

Pine-needle armor protects
Pitys from Pan's assault! And though age drop
Their leafy crowns, their fame soars,
Eclipsing Eva, Cleo and Helen of Troy:
For which of those would speak

For a fashion that constricts
White bodies in a wooden girdle, root to top
Unfaced, unformed, the ******-flowers
Shrouded to suckle darkness? Only they
Who keep cool and holy make

A sanctum to attract
Green virgins, consecrating limb and lip
To chastity's service: like prophets, like preachers,
They descant on the serene and seraphic beauty
Of virgins for virginity's sake.'

Be certain some such pact's
Been struck to keep all glory in the grip
Of ugly spinsters and barren sirs
As you etch on the inner window of your eye
This ****** on her rack:

She, ripe and unplucked, 's
Lain splayed too long in the tortuous boughs: overripe
Now, dour-faced, her fingers
Stiff as twigs, her body woodenly
Askew, she'll ache and wake

Though doomsday bud. Neglect's
Given her lips that lemon-tasting droop:
Untongued, all beauty's bright juice sours.
Tree-twist will ape this gross anatomy
Till irony's bough break.

Many times I wanted to face my demons,
but they never really wanted me to face them,
saying they are too busy or feel sick,
or finding an excuse and putting it off.
I always understood their decisions, letting them
live unfaced.

I suffered from the pain of their disruptive existance,
as I believed they are stronger than me and pigeon-hole me all the time.
I accepted their supremacy without a word of protest.

Within time I became sure that they avoid my presence
and that they actually have no power over my mind,
that there’s something wrong with them,
as they seemed to struggle to cope with me.
And that it's me who they are scared of, not the opposite.
They simply lived scary lives under the brave name:
not even demons - just a bunch of cowards.
Since I had realised that, I have never heard from them again.
They vanished and so did my fright and pain.

Porcelain man sat there afloat,
unfaced by the turmoil rocking his boat,
surrounded by darkness everywhere he looked,
he gathered the lure and flung off the hook,
fishing for memories in that sea of dread,
enticed by the plummeting depths of his head.

Porcelain man sat there in silence,
amidst the crashing of waves, above an ocean of violence,
waiting in patience for his soul to bite,
hoping to catch a glimpse of its sight,
but try as he did, the hook came up empty,
not a piece of himself in that ocean of plenty.

Porcelain man sat there in vain,
for the person he was, had been lost to the rain,
nor the winds, nor the sun, could give pause to his cause,
whatever life he had left, he would devote to his loss,
he was doomed then, to roam,
forever in search of something that's gone.