stranded & strangled, rescue me from the shadows
                    of my own secrecy, two more lifetimes here
                    and a tumor will be my only way out
                    of this repetitive hell—tell me now, is
                    the solitary act of creation no
                    more than mere masturbation? the sound of one
                    hand jacking a steeple off the ground? my cold

grave’s deep hole a cheap hotel’s filthy peephole?
                    heaven itself an impure soul’s exercise
                    in reincarnation? high hopes letting me
                    down, loosening the noose just to let me know
                    an open mind designs its own damnation,
                    is that how it goes? one never can tell, false
                    gods and poets forever at a loss—clouds

and clowns above the law but always at odds with
                    logic, those who know how living well and art
                    never mix—prophets never welcomed until
                    understood, which is why heroes flee hometowns
                    and villages filled with idiots shun them,
                    ruining and running them out with pitchforks
                    and grills grinning under their hoods, kids burning

bridges and poisoning the rivers over
                    which they spanned—no one will ever understand
                    but the illiterati double-crossing
                    the one f(r)iend whose lines they find too deep to see
                    between, too blind to read what my head’s little
                    scribbles reveal, what I have to say about
                    them, that everything they said is true, that

the devil is real, and that everything
                    I write is, too, and that the devil is here—
                    that this poem is food for you fools killing
                    wisdom, starved of thoughts, whose mouths meet where my ass
                    holds court, kissing its ring, drooling while asking,
                    ‘is he evil or beautiful?’, and smiling,
                    I answer your bullshit singing, ‘both & neither…’