Prospecting

How lucky I am to have found my pen,

Bludgeoning scribbles away from my mind,

Attacking the page from mildewing corners

That I never knew existed.

What is it I want?

…

Is it escape from the deep crevasse of lonesomeness:

The torturous grip of isolation

Tying knots in my lungs;

Panicked in a soundless tin can

Beaten dry, mute and dumb by judgement?

Is it an exercise of primeval healing:

A decluttering of synaptic and atrial blocks,

Quelling the afterquakes

Of nerves, singed and eroded to cinders;

A rewiring to those who - through sheer miracle of will -

Can still bring themselves to care for this wreckage,

Even when I cannot?

Is it a calm shedding of ego:

Abandoning, layer by layer,

The necrotic film, a slick putrefying liquor

That tars the love

For my most cherished accomplices;

My deepest passions;

Or the heart of a good puzzle?

…

One thing is certain, exact with atomic precision

And the sharpest resolution of a tunnelling microscope:

This head is a crater, refit as a landfill;

Or the frenetic mess of a restless young pup;

Or the shuffling folds of a never-ending dune;

Or the orbital lobes of a steadily decaying isotope;

Perhaps all? Perhaps some? Perhaps none?

…precision indeed.

…

How lucky I am to have found my pen;

A dependable tool to prospect this chaos,

Gifting me space to truly live and breathe again.