your fortress seems to me, good king, all bondage balefire

I went to pull the bascule and you slapped me with barbed wire

            you stare into my eyes and you call me idealistic
busy being gaudy, nineteenth-century nihilistic

            well, I just read ‘The Bell Jar’ over shoulders of the jury
unstitched my aphonic lip just to tell you this

            those annotations in the margins are not from any novice
I may give myself to mountains but I feast inside asylums

            so analysed that I politicise the angle of every parapet
wait to be taken by the whitecoats hiding in my caret

            and if this petty pace catches hell-bent hospitality
I will turn to Mephistopheles and kiss him like he’s royalty

             if it doesn’t, if my hospice shoes don’t wear thin from fictive fidelity
my storm-bred optimism won’t need such ardent arity

            since there are no innocent readings, Pythia must be pithy
we worship poetry because we cannot trust the living

            can you tell from my references I’m a manic middle-class nightmare?
tomorrow the papers will report it as a red scare

            gate-keeping in your chateau
I hope you find Godot

            my wrists still sting from your poppy-cut fling
but I know now to — morphose.