Grunting and growling,
Like a feral animal in a cage,
Her spirit lashes out,
Clawing at the bars of convention.

There is a feeling I love.
A feeling I can't deny is my favorite.
Some may call it dangerous,
some,
may call it childish.
By I,
can't help
how much
I love it.

Isn't is amazing how there are
a finite number of words,
that try to describe my entire
existence.
They flow from my hands
like honey across computer keys.
My life in forty-seven lines.

It, to me, is inconceivable that
a text box can contain a person,
like a frame might contain a photo.
So those words
might have flown from my fingers,
but they are not me.

I am in my work.
Puzzles solved and projects planned,
each one has a small part of my
self within it's ink-stained pages.
My poetry and photography
represents me far better
than forty-seven lines.

If a university turns me away
based on a personal statement,
I would not be ashamed.
After all, those forty-seven lines
are not my words.
They belong to convention.
'Interpersonal skills' and
'self-confidence'.

I know those words are not me,
although I'll write them
because I know they are what
you want to
see.

This is a poem for the inner trying to get out
For yearnings and desperation
Surrounded by cardboard furniture we sit
             With silence
                 And serious expressions
                             Business-like.

Perhaps I will set down a lyric after lyric
About the clicking pen
Scribbling over paper
About due process
Convention
Eyes avoiding eyes
The building of a wall.
Our windows all have shutters now
We begin to close them

A whispered
Bridge the gap
Is stifled
Pushed away
Drowned
In proper formality
Small talk barely satisfies.

Suits,
Mr Smith,
Suits.
Let us be quirky
Oh fellow human clone of mine!

Let us dance!

The comic convention
has cardboard cutouts of
all of the main characters of
Harry Potter.

Harry,
Ron,
Hermione,
etc.
All motionless in a river of people,
glossy but worn down,
bathed in cold white halogen.

And one by one,
the cosplayers—
the Harrys
Rons
Hermiones,
etc.

Have their pictures taken
with the cutouts,
one cardboard cutout cut out
and replaced with a real human being.

Being human, we
crave companionship,
fear solitude,
crave solitude,
fear companionship.

We try to avoid becoming cardboard
cutouts of ourselves, but sometimes
a retreat into inanimacy
is what the animus needs.

The cosplayers continue to shuffle forward in line
each waiting to pose for a selfie.  Each
politely smiling at the living Harry Potter characters around them,

but not striking up a conversation.

The snake hisses and slithers
Right into your mind
It fills you with wants
And fills you with dreams

The snake coils around your brain
And before you even realize
The snake has captured control
Of what you determine as your life

It bites when you deviate
It crushes when you try
It slowly kills
Any of you left inside

This snake, it's unwelcomed
But we grow accustomed
To the control of the snake
And yield to it's command

Few leave the snake, there is
No escape
And when there is none of you left
The snake slithers away
To find someone else

There is a snake
In everyone
There is a snake
And no way out