i.

Idle your luxuries,
in blazing flames burning
worse than fire shall you burn,¹
drink to dishonesty
and your thirst for truth turns
bitter, a whimpering
whine whose hurt’s flavour’s far
worsened when your fortune
changes in an instant,
turns wastewater-sour all
of a sudden all that
you savoured, without once
hesitating takes an

aching turn down a lone
vacant road you dare not
name, courses a curse’s
crippled path down your grift’s
miserable throat, wealth
tickles with its itch’s
terrible trickle full-
force until the only
one you can blame for your
pain is your changing Self
whose fading essence your
ignorance of the way
this game is played or should

                    ii.

be shames, wastes until dust
chokes your veins, that saddest
satisfaction of yours
you refused to shake, smirk
and grin on your over-
marketed lips mouthing
those prettily-packaged
heresies denouncing whole-
sale what most others hold
most dear, quipping dire drip,
spitting lyrical what
you refuse to heal, conned
and fused feelings you’ve been

steeling inhabiting
an abysmal space ditched
and dropped between a rock
and a hard place, how you
wished for this darkness, coined,
an idiom clichéd
takes no time to splinter
ivory from the clock’s
bleeding face, waiting for
no one, needing none of
your neediness, how now
lackadaisical fate
razes against no pure

                    iii.

reassurance more sure
than you thought your battered
heart’s weathered and worn
perseverance could take,
resilient little thing
mistaking for something
great this experience
anyone else sane would
forego since fame’s pursuit
forsakes the delicate
daintiest soul down to
its very name, quakes with
blaspheming vainglories

down to its quivering
hole all the wit-weighty
shade your thinning skin no
longer can pretend to
hold, devastates what no
inflammatory prayer
can replace, faith in what
you ignored, who you are,
sacrificed to what you
were, these needles of teeth
beneath the white-hot hell-
heat fiendish appetite
of which your anguishing

                    iv.

situation synchs its
licentiousness to be
seen as more than merely
idolatrous, to be
esteemed by masses whose
opiate is the most
potent elixir you
abhor, is it any
wonder, then, your sickness
has an untold cure in
being beheld bare and
bold by a world whose worse,
much more unfortunate

luxury is to be
tortured on your altar,
every audience
has its intention to
offer, even if it
includes coming down to
being amused by the
falling so very hard
of so haughty a star,
the washing of wounds in
wormwood as they watch you
do what it is you do
so well, talented fool.

__________
¹The opening line of the poem is derived from the prophetic condemnation recorded in Chapter 100, Verse 9 of “The First Book of Enoch: 1 Enoch” in The Books of Enoch: The Angels, The Watchers and The Nephilim (with Extensive Commentary on the Three Books of Enoch, the Fallen Angels, the Calendar of Enoch, and Daniel’s Prophecy): 2^nd Edition: A Volume Containing The First Book of Enoch (The Ethiopic Book of Enoch), The Second Book of Enoch (The Slavonic Secrets of Enoch), The Third Book of Enoch (The Hebrew Book of Enoch), The Book of Fallen Angels, The Watchers, and the Origins of Evil: With Expanded Commentary on Enoch, Angels, Prophecies and Calendars in the Sacred Texts: by Dr. Joseph B. Lumpkin, published at Blountsville, Alabama by Fifth Estate in 2011; page 148.