I have lost my footprints in the jewl-like snow

Only finding my way back to strangers homes

Inhabited by the moving, the writhing, bedsheet

Of worms. In day beleaguered by talking screens

The apathy bars, this drugged mind, flare-following

Ever turned off itself, dough used to bake something alien

Like a bird crying in childbirth.

In the end we all face ourselves and spit

I met a guy who polished the mirror, ha ha!

Like anything makes a difference, the devil’s fixed.

If you declare bankruptcy, shave you head

And chant upon a mountain or write odes to birds

Perhaps that will save you (a poor parachute)

From the tentacled pit of melancholy that edges

Into our lives over age, like a cancer black.

Unless unless unless unless…We smile –

No! Who dares smirk in quicksand?

Though I’ve never seen anyone happier

Than a lunatic with a yo-yo.

I’ve seen upon the plains of shmucks

Weird contentment, like medicated stock

Nay, you will not hypnotise me!

No, let me have my beer bitter

My spirits unchased and unforgiven.

Let this vessel sink, its boards buckle

And the captain dive down holding the anchor.

They will drag him up one day, seaweed in his hair

And below the fish-eaten eyes, witness a scaly smile.

That is my mirth. That is my paradise

A cold plate that would depress a Spartan

But real and unlosable. My bereft mountain

Of all the places I could claim empire

I placed mine on the most jagged peak

Unconquerable, undesirable. Shit but real.