Her mournful eyes fixed
on some distant invisible point

In all her life
she rarely opened her arms to anyone
rarely returned affection
her heart an icy chamber
stoic, closed

Half the time she was penned up in isolation
trapped in an asylum
a life cruelly altered by thorazine
and shock treatments
her soundtrack a choir of madwomen
their voices running riot
in a snake pit

He remembers the tightrope
in ring one
A chant dulls his ears
and he falls, dreaming
A madwoman's icy fingertips
skim down the side of his head
Shrieks explode
inside his throat
Childlike, he warms himself
with brown, vibrant blankets
He can almost feel the tightrope
tugging under his feet
The memory jars him
His hand leaps endlessly
through a somersault
sky, hand to head, hand to
chest, then to thigh, while
blood spots the dirt floor

Like dying sheep, he bleats
The moans are lonely
ghastly, ricocheting off
the cold walls of his brain
remembering again the
stiff cord pressing
against his trembling frame
the taut stretch
distracting him
He stops and sees himself
carrying an aged man
to a snowy grave
He turns to watch the knife-thrower
turn the knife around
while a liquored mob shouts
Jostled, he sees memories
scatter everywhere

Withdrawing to an empty room
he craves the lack of light
the falling sensation overwhelming
the dreams collapsing around him
like an ancient ruin

Sometimes I just want to break free
from pen on paper

I want to get away from the sound of
my ancient typewriter clacking away
my fingers creating images dialogue feelings
the actor inside me wanting to
crash through

Sometimes I want to break away
from the pool of words
I want to startle someone
make them understand
my search for clarity
my desire to
take down the
fourth wall
brick
by
brick
the mad architect
shuffling through
a mass of blueprints
looking for the one
that shrieks order

it's like me
landing suddenly
on an empty island
drifting on a sunless beach
stumbling over cold shifting sand
waves roaring
strong winds pounding me
like a dazed prizefighter
going down for the count
me
lost and alone
wondering what hopeless hell i'm in now

I may as well warn you.
This poem will not end in death.
I haven't decided what it will be about.
But it won't be about death.
I don't have any desire to explain it
or peddle it
or wrap a ribbon around it.

There are so many other things to explore.
Why waste time on something no one really
knows anything about?

I'm being rhetorical.

Sort of.

Alliterative alliteration
always amuses
and excuses
my silly muses

most of the time
he drifted
in and out
of cindy's life

the man she once looked up to
was now enslaved
by the bottle
his hair receding
his face lined
his smile
furtive

he told her he had a new girl
in atlantic city
a dancer he met
in one of the resort's
endangered casinos

cindy pictured the girl as
young
brunette bangs
hard eyes
emaciated
a lap dancer
hooked on something
forbidden

the next morning
he threw a few twenties
on the kitchen table
left a note
in his hung over scrawl
about catching a
greyhound bus to a-c

he was already
out the door
on his way
to nirvana

when she read the note
all she thought was
'bye daddy...see you whenever'