And the desire of my heart realizes
itself, a celebration of life
in reverse, to see by the light that
is within me a third course, to feast
no longer on emptiness but increase by

what I have learned of selfless love, finding much-
needed solidarity in such
unexpected places, greeting the
pried jaws of each repeated season’s
ceaseless ferocity proverbially,

maximizing the meaning of the maxim
not by shouting, but mouthing almost
inaudibly, those words of power,
‘May the fear you inspire be greater
than the danger all you beasts actually

embody, for you things are not the only
moments of which I am made,’ enough
said, thrice have I been saved, repelled by
the graves I sought to see that I am
only as deep as the Self that I dig, so

into it finally, this becoming me
has been one hell of a party, wild,
really, delayed partly by seeking
to hide from potential partners that
poverty I used as an excuse then to

deny each the truth of my beauty, turning
away opportunity in my
pursuit of lucrative misery,
incorporating its company
into my artistry, capitalizing

on the solitude which ensues when you turn
every last ally into an
enemy, that insanity this
incantation exists to undo,
finally I don’t give a goddamn about

mor(t)ality but I’ve got my own brand of
integrity, so sleepy after
driving hard my wood deep and far in-
to your hollow, to be crucified
on the splinters of my own self-created

sorrow bestows no martyrdom, only steals
instead of borrows any broken
home’s self-perpetuated mythos
and where would we all be without our
troubled childhoods? This side of the tomb, unraged,

smooth-talking comforters blanketed thick in
blazing, haloless aliases
of assumed names, unsaintly soothing
sayers more than able to assuage
fear unmaking the doom we anticipate

yet never near, now that would be something worth
writing down, recording truly and
well its solution for this nagging
malady’s sufferers and many
others to read and hear: anger never heals.