A Spoken Shadow

 Sins open passages and jam the doors with indiscretion

A working girl on a double shift is an amateur profession

Seeking a collection of acronyms that spell love in every language

Feeling each hum reverberate off our memories until they swell into the melody of our lives

Bless me father if there be a faith to follow

Give me strength to fight the raging stage fright brought on by obligation

Clawing at the walls at the bottom of the bottle,

Digging deeper with every echoed cry of defeat

Feeling fatigue like a tow rope on my eyelids

Fingers spread in anticipation of the coming tides

Ebbing forth for potential energy

I am the levee; I’ve been your every excuse since the sandbox

Standing off against the swarms of sardonic

My soul a convulsing plague; a bubonic tonic-clonic

Unclenching my jaw and snapping forth my teeth as I chew through the psychosomatic umbilical

Arms freckled with scars from scorching stares

Picking the dead flesh and bleeding solar flares

Searching for inspiration in squalor, for praise in the condemned

Sifting through every textual tome for what’s found in the hearts of men

Shifting around corners in the Red Light District of Depravity

I’ll rifle through regret until gunpowder fills my cavities

Emitting frequencies not yet dialed in, speaking several simultaneous tongues

Unhinging the joint from my knee caps as I’m run through the last rung

I’m losing this fight, a Gentlemen’s Blight, though with force to life I clung

I continue to scale this Iron Veil until need for an Iron lung.