a 'Madman' looks at Forty

Half-grieving another of
Pluto's near passages,
I hold my flesh-crusted, boil-pocked skull
in my feverish phalanges,
praying to deities famous and strange
imploring not just for survival
but deep revival in elysium fumes,
along with relief from the memories
of myriad misadventures
and sundry near dooms...

over the turning years
missed chances
and fateful gear rotations of Fortuna,
my orphic blue eyes
have turned covetous green,
and my proud pointed chest
has shrunken and paled,
though now it's wrapped
not in charity rags but in
aptly artistic silk dress-shirts...

Universities, Corporations, spiritual and primal maladies, golden hand-cuffs,
Stigmatized humanimal cages, Ivory-towered Psych Institutions, poisonous medicines,
I've known a few...
and now it seems they're
changing my shoes again
from 'no slip' asylum socks
to dapper, shined-leather loafers...

'All the better to stomp out brains,'
I bellow softly.
The doctors laugh, not insincerely but with wicked warning in their eyes.
The lab-coated Crassus says:
"You've come so far since wearing chains... and the art you make is to us like rain."

Soon, I am let go from the sword-eyed guards
of the enchanted dungeon of the sickle-cell moon
where patients emerge from their dwellings and coffins
only for the sordid sable hours of night
to mingle, to steal, to breed,
to trick, hook, and maim, and for some:
to create art...

but under the sun-light,
a cursee of that stage will
start to melt like a wax persona
quiet blisters now bursting painting
a handsome Patrician visage zombie-like,
with feral poolings and armoured scabbings of blood...

his soul recoils and his head aches
as he pulls back into 'sanctuary' darkness for a while...
to pray to a hundred stake-holding spirits,
to improve his moral carriage even amid barbarity,
or to create art so pure and innovative...
as to move the arch-anarchists
and dire trident-wielding demi-Gods to pardon
the evil deeds of the artist, literati, or musician
on the grounds that arias and stanzas of true genius
are among the highest of treasures,
as prized in the spirit world
as the finest diamond or gold,
or soul of beneficent monk...

and so diving into the nightmare-tormented sleep
of these weird twilight artists
descend the angel-winged, death-dispelling Valkyries
to carry the artists through the tunnels of Molloch...
and up through the Bohemian archway, or 'fornice,'
out into the sweet, forgiving rays
of mighty and horrible 'Ra'
to again take their place
in the sunlit world...
as Pluto smiles on these brave persistent undead
and gifts them caps of invisibility
like sacred sable halos

So much I could tell
of the strange, psychic, demonic, and simply wanton...
missing mirror reflections and sordid high connections....
yet so much is past and gone,
that it's better to give the daemon-temples,
the experimental psych-wards,
and marble-columned death gardens
the serene and sealed silence they seek...

and to emerge in dapper street clothes
into my small estate
on Queen Anne Ave,
where literary awards mosaic the white walls
of the study,
and where
beneath Tibetan prayer flags...
we talk easily with my African gardeners
and garden fervently with my friends and lovers,
and though my privileged situation
is imbalanced and accompanied
by Puck's everyday pathos',
still I strive to live with beauty
to seek health and minor wealth,
and to dedicate my dug-up talents
(to amid other investments)
the art and poetry
that were the Promethean pursuits
of my younger, 'stranger' self

May you receive the blessings of the Buddha, Jesus, Ganesh, Ra, and Sobek. Namaste