You have to be consistent
with your madness, the failed
alchemist wrote, to make mirth
or meaning from it. I follow
this creed of transformation, though
what I have yet made from mine
is only a love worsted yellow
with time.

*******

I held my country
by her two ruddy cheeks
and planted a rose on her lips.

Unrequited, the rose fell
to blisters.

*******

O Charon,
deliver to what died in me
this missive I wrote in bile—elegy
for my jaundiced heart. I keep running
after the dream of a good life,
even as my feet burns, even
as the pain wells up bottled in me.

There, on the horizon, my joy, and there,
too, the words of my father:

It is not enough that you want a thing;
you have to ache for it. Your feet
are only your feet until you're dead.
And then, it's the world's. But your life,
that stays with you.

My life and I, caught in this bobblehead body,
run etcetera towards joy.