Bent

The ironic sway took the youth box away-

once we learn we never forget but betrayals turn

our love to a defect - automaton smiles and tangerine tiles,

those days we were but the test that our faith hath promised.

Act upon or below whatever hits your flow -

the swerve is all too familiar for communion.

And when the temper's low and the fences rise,

we ain't got no army left to desecrate the demise.

All the words that embroidered my verse

with mechanical solutions - gone dead by the wind swept

that nurtured the soothing convulsions

that fed kindly the tyranny of elocution.

New slate higher stakes - the discourse of the modern age

perchance seduced by the fascism of the reasoning mind

breeds the clockwork cacophony, the deafening decisions -

the repeated pantomime of empty youth dismantled passion.

The temperament is wise, the intakes measured -

epicurean wit epitomized, oxymoronic!

Moronic indeed, the remarkably untrepidating will to live,

to exist, self monitored, smiling painting sighed sly delinquent.

And love is just a minor reaction whose ways shake me no longer

yet I can hear the turmoil of its industry in the distance -

the inviting allure of wholeness rising in its trenches

and being the hostess of a party under the sea.

No objection to be made at its glorious parade

no inflection is had when it breathes too close to my neck

nothing is reached for, nothing is had:

once again the autocratic bubble has sealed me in its nest.

Quarantined out by the revolver clout

I am the idle king like Ulysses' heavy head masks its past life.

I shan't remember pride nor melodramatic tribulations

but if I look ahead, little lives past the discriminate meticulous.

Movement to be had, yet I have turned immune to sin -

How to fool the Just into breathing once again?

The laughable tumor coughs up its temper

and the waves of temperance swallow me entire.

A body with no weight happens only in dreams

- to be tall enough to annul existing.