• I've always been one for grand romantic gestures
    The kind that people write about
    but never do
    Displays involving fire and dirt
    Plays that turn sweet defeat
    Loud enough to bring Virgos to my feet
    and rend the sky irrelevant
    Pure chaos for the hell of it
    Shakespearean rhymes sent flying
    through ears, over heads, and into hearts
    I take no part in passive passion
    My brand of poetry's a wicked fashion
    I never know if the audience sees what I see
    I've spent a lifetime asking "To be or not to be."
    "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind
    to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
    or to take arms against a sea of troubles
    and by opposing, end them. To die. To sleep. No more."*
    No more.
    I've long since grown weary of senseless quarry
    Starry eyed, let the skies see my folly
    If ever I need redemption,
    let me here be reconciled
    Crucifixion across my chest is defiled
    because it only feeds my ego
    Crown my head with broken hearts
    entwined with barbed wire and strands of DNA
    Then say 'Here stands the King Grotesque
    Strewn across his pitiful mess
    Do not test him.'
    It is with pale cheer that players of pages tread here
    Is this riddle too vexing?
    Who has said I seem amazed?
    "Seems, madame? Nay, I know not 'seems.'
    'Tis not alone my inky coat, good mother,
    nor customary suits of solemn black
    nor windy suspiration of forced breath
    No, nor the fruitful river in the eye
    nor the dejected havior of the visiage
    together with all forms, moods, and shapes of grief
    that can denote me truly. These indeed seem
    for they are actions that a man might play."*
    I have played for too long
    What can I say now that isn't a plea
    for something more than I deserve?
    I have only ever been served what I've sewn
    and with mocking tones I hear voices
    that say I should have known what I am:
    A poet writing a reckless disease full-blown
    In what world is a cure for me grown?
    Witness listless agony
    The carnage of comatose atrophy
    condensed and channeled through a defective Form
    From where you are, it seems fun
    "I am too much in the Sun."*
    My throne has been burned away
    all delusions of grandeur evaporated
    leaving nothing but the ashen outline of Pride
    Take too my identity
    Take too my heart
    Take too my security
    Take every part of me that I've ever despised
    "You cannot take from me anything
    that I would more willingly part withal-
    except my life, except my life, except my life."*
    Let me be new
    Allow me solitude in socializing
    Let it be my burden to decipher my means
    If I am obscene, ignore me
    Leave me and see my scene from afar
    Watch my wild performance of abhorrence
    Suffer my torrents of torments
    and call me a liar
    "I don't play accurately- anyone can play accurately-
    but I play with wonderful expression."**
    Who's to say who comprehends my confession?
    There is more to it than I divulge
    It has been said that such things are common.
    "Ay, madame, it is common."*
    But what, in such simple shows
    could I hide of my true intent if I chose?
    My manufactured words are spent splendidly
    as warnings to the threat
    "'Twas brillig and the slithy toves
    did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
    All mimsy were the borogroves
    and the mome raths outgrabe
    Beware the Jabberwock, my son
    The Jaws that bite, the claws that catch."***
    I have been caught by monsters of my own
    Bitten by plagues of my own invention
    My imagination now embodies dissension
    It is in these troubled days that I find the words
    to apologize for my wicked tongue
    He is a rascal with a mind of his own
    Tasting virtues and spitting vices, he shames me
    with talk of idle gauds
    I see your heads nod like you're tired
    so I shall leave
    I give this for all to perceive:
    "If we shadows have offended,
    Think but this, and all is mended,
    That you have but slumber'd here
    While these visions did appear.
    And this weak and idle theme,
    No more yielding but a dream,
    Gentles, do not reprehend:
    if you pardon, we will mend:
    And, as I am an honest Puck,
    If we have unearned luck
    Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
    We will make amends ere long;
    Else the Puck a liar call;
    So, good night unto you all.
    Give me your hands, if we be friends,
    And Robin shall restore amends."****