I am scared.

Eye sweating, lip stinging scared.

An irregular pulsar in the overstuffed confusion of my chest offers a less than precise signal, two-two time minus one, again and then again. All inside chooses to rise in unison and grip my desiccated throat. My fingers hover, but I dare not move. The continuation of this vessel in the balance and yet I still wrestle with pride and a fear of wasting people’s time. To call or not to call is the very pressing question as my elbow cushions pins and a hollowing glacier floats through my gut.

In my head I’m running checks, each twist each twinge each creak each tug is it fresh or a pained legacy. As fear begets panic I cough and thump my chest. Should my breath be quite this short?

Two digits press on sinistral wrist trying to gauge normality amidst the alarm but I felt is too fast, too fast and then nothing it keeps missing yet none around seem to sense, don’t read the gaping orbs and snapping talk as ought but censure and huff away. Sending mixed signals to the wider world and me the ice cascades down my spine then subsides. Oh yes I am very scared.

 

And the doctors and the nurses tell me everything is ok, but send me on my way with a script that tells a different story:

 

that crux, ripped and torn, shows a way

past manifold beats of egress,

gateways of choice,

whether whimpered snuffed filament

or spiteful fuse that refuses to blow

I just need to join the dots

to reveal the route to my mortal harbour

 

 

And the very next day? Life continues with no regard, doesn’t look over its shoulder to see if I am keeping up, leaves me instead to ponder:

 

in a hot, rude, black shod silver kiln

where a heart believes it has been truly broken,

inferior and ventricular,

the first bars of that September song strike open

a sudden realization of December too soon

 

I cannot lead the cheer for the assassin’s bleed

but ask they lay their blades at rest until

the closing breath has fled

cracking blackening tendrils are ready grown

along the wires on the map of underpinned organs

and split my rolling eyes

 

yes I see rocks and scraped dirt

under that angular peninsular of steel and glass

not as valedictory obituary

but shallow graves awaiting the pretty little girls

their sub-strated gate to immortal perfection

 

their eternal smiles of garnered youth masking

a ghastly grimaced truth yet they’ll remain, forever, so beautiful

while I have left it too late and will just fade

in a grey scale buried between the help wanted

and used cars

 

Bottled and coddled, a frightened stasis takes control and suddenly I feel old and guilty and I remember my mother and I fear an unwelcome reunion.

 

deep in dominion of the dying, between

the second and third heart congesting hours,

I looked into the darkest glass

naked , dishevelled  and dared to ask

for answers I thought I deserved

expecting no reply but knowing

that bub black beast sees me now

and for me alone will reserve and release

through execrable  years of fearful, fitful non-sleep

its furious horror

 

And now here I sit and sweat on a doctor’s discretion, knowing not whether I can swing from the trees or should simply drop to my knees in surrendered execration.

 

this changeling walks, still scared to run,

along furred boulevards of evasion,

greater or luckier still,

squeezed tighter than the urban rush in his breast

yet still he craves those complex folds of pleasure

and sees through the eyes of a fool seeking

a cleaner rapture