i.

A going about it in
circles, this pendulum grip on
what bit of sense madness
permits pivots from prophecy to
lunacy to loneliest ownership of
going bat-shit to sworn silence
again, and then again, and
part-way back, black-lettered literal homage
to Sexton whose Bedlam blues
my own swinging moods did
not plot, hers consumed and

                    ii.

bled through, surrogate wounds, a
stigmata bloom from a bouquet
of thorns martyred poets throw
into the embrace of our
brood, although in remembering, which
isn’t reminiscing, for I mustn’t,
one shouldn’t relish or fetishize
the totemic shamanic wilderness of
having spent a stint involuntarily
committed to an institution when
asylum is a solace sought,

                    iii.

not the sort of punishment
it was, or so I
thought then, but in mining
it since, Mecca of my
regenesis, neither for inspiration nor
for affluence, for such authenticity
as this craziness gifts others
grift, their struggles more makeshift,
my traumatic experiences as manifold
as their chokehold has been
manifest, but it was a

                    iv.

sprint, a marathon mess, that
led me from one end
of the Peninsula, North End
to South to North again
until Robie forked its tongue
into Massachusetts that, at the
Avenue’s ingress, barefoot, heels crookèd
and bleeding, my flight had
to contend with the staff
of that Audi dealership who
resisted my insistence that this

                    v.

was just what one does
when voices enlist surroundings to
convince one they must out-run
invisible bullets, that the only
thing attempted was to live,
not to end this life
I’ve been left with, thus
when paramedics and officers arrived
unimpressed, the peace kept was
that calm distance permitted by
a mind from its bifurcation’s

                    vi.

blurring of battle lines, of
insight from blindness, madness before
method redefined its trim of
my eccentricity’s convenient beard, the
artifice of seeing an edifice
crack, how different to see
it mirrored in the glimpses
of strangers when going it
alone, 7-Lane for observation after
taking off from home, broken
more than any other escape

                    vii.

before, shattered vessel even demons
ignored, pieced together by scholars
of disaster after captured, toes
torn by stone, by translators
of bones, with my brights
on in a war-time dim-out
zone, heretofore unspoken inciting moment
in my breaking open’s aching
lore underscored being had being
publicly bad, shard-hearted bard by
raucous hordes impossible to succour.