Alchemisland

When I was young and hated life

I brandished pain, the oldest knife

Recalcitrance’s balled fists crying out in need

Cold-blooded offspring of a certain serpent’s seed

I recall standing on a ledge, up three floors

Part performance, and this really was, seek no metaphors

Like a man who is allergic to doors

Out on that widthless ledge with west wind gathering force

Should I stumble and from consciousness violently divorce

People should have said “No surprise, given what came before”

But I made it back in and also across, a gap of two feet to leap

In a friend’s window and back to the gathering, considering life very cheap

Sometimes I remember it and tell myself I was once brave

No locked door could bar me in, myself I will home safe

But another me that’s deeper down, deep enough where fishes drown

Raises clammy palm to clammy brow, to rub the dizzy from my crown

The thought of thoughtlessness and letting go, falling down like falling snow

Even seated unsettles my balance like mad spending. Is that Vertigo?

The virgo suffering vertigo, a heidthebaw, better he should know, who’ll let his parents know

It would have been a stupid way to go

Muturation, Charles Maturin Melmoth haunting of past self.

Legend No Ledge Ledge Windowledge Knowledge.