poetry critical : poem

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The Tumor

ChedelSol

It’s there—somewhere	1
Behind that most sensitive,	2
Subjective of black walls.	3
An undetectable tumor	4
Firing neurons at random	5
In circles most times,	6
Like a psychedelic merry-go-round	7
The carnival music that milks terror	8
And the sugar high—giddiness	9
Manic—fun, fun, fun	10
Exhausted, the machine breaks down—	11
The tumor, in its self-righteous glory	12
Pulsates with energy,	13
sneering at its slave body	14
appeasing its addiction	15
of Power…ah! The power,	16
Endless pots of coffee and cartons of cigarettes.	17
An amazing display of corruption…	18
A helpless psyche—at the mercy of	19
Praise and attention, starved of love,	20
Not noticing the masses parading around.	21
An endless procession of nameless, faceless smiles.	22
How sickening! A threat to all those sacred broodings,	23
That comfortably numbing labor of sleepless nights.	24
False! No true understanding of ideas and man	25
Just the content masturbation of life for its own sake...	26
There is no parade of the lonely souls	27
Of defective origin- radiating obscurity.	28
No banners or balloons—no noise at all	29
Just the weeping of solitary violins,	30
Drowned out by three-hundred channels	31
Of Hi-Definition celebration—mind’s eye of the world	32
That “other” world, far above those trembling hearts	33
Of cripples hidden away in dungeons.	34
Dimly lit by Puritan candles and bare,	35
Ascetic rooms, sparse furnishings—unkempt	36
No sound to be sure…the tortuous dripping,	37
Grey water, through cracks in the ceiling	38
Tap, tap, tap…that monotonous, maddening	39
Metronome—keeping the time,	40
To deaf ears, engrossed in compulsions,	41
Obsessive delusions of genius and weight.	42
Tap, tap, tap—countdown to the end, at least for a while	43
The hooded demons come as they will,	44
Who’s to stop them? When they’ve shredded every piece of insight	45
Burned any remnant of satisfaction.	46
Taunting the poor recluse—	47
With no one to confess that haunting secret	48
The winged rats, daemonic apparitions	49
Enticed to destroy all in sight—	50
It’s poetic end, as it must be	51
Induced by the very mind that spawned a world of salvation,	52
For himself his own Jesus— a tumor.	53
For all other entities of dreams and visions,	54
Forsake his mind at its desperate hour.	55
The hypnotic, thousand-yard stare...	56
Penetrates through cheap canvas—beyond,	57
That high plain devoid of heavenly bodies.	58
Beyond any supernatural domain, it lies inside—	59
Inside that all-consuming tumor	60
Of staggering heights …the intangible,	61
Boxed and stacked on shelves	62
A secret reservoir, selectively permeable	63
To only those with nothing else	64
A token victory—surely to be found	65
Among the smoldering ash and ruin	66
When at last the opus is bled dry,	67
The requiem for anything…	68
Anything that might last.	69
That could withstand the hell-fire	70
And the thrashing of ungodly claws	71
To be preserved—	72
Once the tumor slowly eats away	73
At itself—imploding, self-destructing	74
Into a single, infinitely dense singularity	75
Then gone, all that once brought death and destruction	76
That waged war with both heaven and hell,	77
That fought for a place among the elements, and a stage—	78
Obliterated in an instant.	79
Still no noise…no tapping of water, no violin...	80
Just the metallic ping of a single shell falling to the floor.	81

04/05/07

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