I was happier with the madness.
I watched the bridge burn from the highest window of my forehead and pulled the shade on my third eye.
Did a freefall backslide into the anesthetic blanket of an over the counter prefab life.
Now I’m shotgunning smoke from the lips of poets. Blowing rings around the moon. Making Saturn from a hubcap, until the orderlies graft the remote control to my palm.
Now my heart is plowed by Hallmark card commercials in the methadone clinic of Must See TV.
I begin to reminisce about spending days with my mouth stopped shut by a wasp nest until I burned it out with cigarettes.
Shaking the Magic 8 Ball and having it tell me “Fuck No!” one day and “Hell Yes!” the next.
I was happier when I took the pain from a hip flask
Spilling rainbow oil slick snailbelly juice on my forehead
Like an anointing
Like a warning
My day planner choked with blood and shit and the cryptic symbols from the Babylonian curse she tattooed around my heart.
Out the window I see a new bridge, a crystal cat’s cradle of voices inter-cut with heartbeats.
So I overpower the warden and finally break free
It’s easy to do because the warden is me
I want it all back
The spinning carousel face
Russian roulette with a scorpion jukebox
Tequila tango of tongues in the back alley of my mind
Always a step away from the mad shit
The breakthrough an ever falling star
Happiness a train I keep missing in a dream
Every day dying in a Maserati car wreck of ecstasy
But I want it, even if it eats my heart,
I want it.
I want the poetry back.