Subway Monologue

Seek inside what ye may, dear reader,

I shall divulge nothing!

None that was mine to give, anyway.

My death lends me,

An audience I never had

In waking hours;

But I am forgiving:

Read on, if you must,

Tear open a page and peep inside,

Your vulgar curiosities eager

To rape me of my secrets,

Secrets I left without maps.

Drink if you shall,

Of my jealous Love,

Of my crude Laughter,

The blind-alleys of blank pages,

The playing field for skeletons,

My memories too full and blemished,

To vouchsafe their safe garrison.

But, alas, you shall find my tomes,

Scattered and shuffled,

The words inscrutable, illegible,

Truant, runaway thoughts borne upon weak thrills,

Content to collapse in some faraway field

To call their home and graveyard,
Play with my verses, why don't you?

I orchestrated mad dances with these marionettes,

I think I left the strands somewhere beyond the seventh page,

Oh, do behave!

Their movements bewitch, dear reader,

Yes, they ensnare with their silver rhythms,

The bovine calm of their aligned ranks,

Is pregnant with mischief!

You must find them by their fringes,

And bully them into obedience!

Yes, I conscripted missionaries then,

Stolen from cloisters in faraway dreams,

Adroit masons of the mind

To prise ideas brick-by-brick,

Entire realities dismantled,

Tapestries and murals burnt with your hands,

Temples desecrated into theaters of my sins,

The dilated sun still at their backs,

Its radiance now cloaking their pained expressions,

Even as you sing my hymns.

My heart was opened on these altars,

The guts were parceled in neat lines;

Careful not to touch them for too long,

These phrases are purer than sodium flakes --

Taste them not!

They will singe your insides!

Oh dear, did I ask you to drink them?

I folded storms in their static pockets,

And whispered explosions into their still waters,

There is lightning in the crevasses of those velvet skies,

Do tell when they find