Steel ribs cage the beast.
Burst free, my enemy!
Reveal yourself to the world!
A ridiculous proclamation
born of a ridiculous man.
I splutter out like a wetted candle.
Exertion meets exhaustion, as
steam rises like ghosting breaths.
Only the melancholy escapes,
grey plumes of inner me.
The shell remains untouched,
unlike the damaged mind
which reaches tendrils of self
deep under a paper epidermis
to ink out everything they touch.
Dark, they are, seeking crimson
warmth and love, an
extension to this endless pain.
A revelation. A blunt gift.
The inner me is my enemy.
I repeat this patient mantra.
But the cage is unbending
and the will behind it raw.
After all, is passing not for
blurring speedsters, or
those avoiding the view?
I have neither a view nor
the time in which to travel.
This heart thuds an agreement
when I would wish It
a stone-cold death.

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Richard 

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