Sitting in shadow within a ring of 
Clapping hands clapping in symphony
Over-taut wire snaps with a whip,
A lion tamer injuring the 
Beast whose circuits have tripped
Who runs unchecked, the sedatives 
No longer work.
The clappers have nothing inside
But a little loose dirt, who are they
To distort the lightning, collapse me?

Passion and anger and melancholy
All dissolved in acid and in lime.
Like a jacketed bullet, a parcel named
And dated;
A penance cast by mediators
Around my neck; a pilgrimage 
Of obedience, of subtly shifting lies
Like a swarm, dripping from drooping boughs
Heavy with animal life.
The paparazzi flash.

And when the photos come out,
Little blocks of life,
Within each frame is nothing
Of the tortuous fire ball,
Like a glass of sweet drink
More poison than liquor,
My face a glimpse into worlds,
Worlds of grey planes and sluggish rivers.
But I’ve been holding my breath 
For too long, my lungs filled with vacuum.

There is precious little left, precious
Friend. I have know
A hurricane as a friend
And that relationship
Whittles one away into something
Terribly thin and tapering.
Like an ethnic purge, a Blitzkrieg, 
A suffocating man trapped in a blaze,
To open a door and the draught
Balls up the fire even more.

On a one-way road my love drives
Recklessly, the lampposts that hit me
Fuse components into homogenous heavy lumps.
An unanswered phone in a train or a bus or a coach;
A wait in summer heat with a single insect
Deafening me. The assassin sitting in his palace,
With earmuffs and a smoking jacket.
A knife in the gut. A tortured soothsayer sky,
Bolted to the floor,
The simplicity of walking away.