Sestina

Like an oversharpened photograph
The world has too much definition, wrought
From crystal, glows and glows; the leaves debate
With razor twigs their essence in the air
Their cliched female curliques unfold
And I must wincingly avert my face.

A devil came. I came within an ace
Of signing with my shaking autograph
Papers would let them lock me in the hold
Til sanity returned. I knew I ought
To let them, grubby merchants of despair,
My brain, with wormy pills, recalculate.

The black apple of knowing-love I ate
For reasons I don't understand. Disgrace,
Eden-expulsion nearly followed fair
Hard on the heels of that. God's seismograph
Broke its needle, the angel said he thought
I'd got off light, and beat his wings of gold.

Flung down to earth, goat-minded, oh so bold,
A thunderbolt transfixed my loins and pate,
The world flicked black and white, a mad child fought
The lightswitch, my flesh fell apart like lace,
My satyriasis would telegraph
Intention through the universe with flair.

Weariness led me at last to a chair,
A cup of tea, a blanket for the cold,
A pen, a pad, an endless paragraph,
And slowly a sick sense did inculcate
Within my burning lobes - I did replace
That turmoil with a calmness dearly bought.

Reordering of all my years I sought
A certain off-the-trackness made repair;
Of all the lonely lies I lived no trace
Remains, the cheap suit, salesman's suitcase sold,
Twenty-one years on took advice: create.
So irresponsible, my epigraph.

Desire's graphologies are overwrought
Scribbles of senseless intimate despair,
Unless compassion softly holds in place.