Last February,
I arrived at madness,
its mouth quite open,
a snuff box crudely fashioned
into a carillons à musique,
lined with the crooked teeth
of disorder,
each tuned to discord
set to accompany
my mechanical pirouette
within.

Invited to dance
that forbidden dance
society scorns,
I spun in mindless circles
on the rolled out red carpet
of the devil’s
wagging tongue.
He had panted long enough,
I suppose I supposed.

Last February,
I shed the clothes of sanity,
discarded for a time my smiling mask
that had hitherto said hello upon command,
that had spat out other such vapid niceties
as was deemed necessary, proper, polite, etc.
Feral and naked,
I sacrificed syntax to
Harpocrates,
a child mistook for silence.

I woke from that fevered dream
dressed in numbness
noting the hardness of my bones,
my anatomy intact,
my brain no more broken than before,
my organs ticking away at their tasks
unaware that I had been unaware
of life or death or the running of the mail
and all such banal trappings
and goings-on.


Today
is a day
like any other.
I suckle on the vacuous teat
of the trivial truth of my existence,
and though I have had my fill of emptiness,
I eat what I am fed,
dutiful,
ashamed.

02/09/2014

Posted on 02/09/2014
Copyright © 2025 Dane Campbell