sulphur skeletons & grey overheads on plastic floors & walls
& the sounds of unbelievably dense songs
blaring into your ears, organs begging to escape
grasping words from tired throats & deathly glassed eyes & bright teeth
& so many choices & compromises for what,
but a slower death & a softer landing, to choose Life
in solitude I try to foster clarity yet
to feel in earnest is to accept a horrible yearning, an eternal ache,
to let tears dry and fester in ineptitude
or to hover over the madness, the death of time, the mania of will
which drives red shoes into the arms of the devious devil; the dream
of the end of this bony prison is lost again, forever dancing towards it
I've felt the powers of magic propel me into fevered frenzy towards the Other
but it is inside the mind that the Other gazes
isn't it that: not romantic love, or familial love, that I crave
but to know myself as observer and observed, to end the loneliness
of the fractured psyches, fighting to tell this body's narrative
yet i cannot find the means; i am afraid of losing my vanity, which
consecrates me as a human with time
to touch another is to stroke a solitary heart the same as I,
a ghost in a shell, begging to share air in a raw world an eternity away