I No Longer Know If I Am Mad

I no longer know if I am mad

or if I'm feigning it to cover my own mediocrity

I sometimes feel like a fell wizened necromancer

labouring at his pleasure

performing his liturgy as one long consumed by ashes

Factory fumes nourishing the dreams of the cosmopolite

Affectionate longing for white coats, auditoriums and blackboard dust

Spiraling walkways, webs of concrete, bricks and mirrored glass

I no longer know if I have experienced passion/love/despair/hate

Was it only socially induced behaviour?

Like long forgotten twisted poetry

gleaned from mouldy parchment

Pain is always more real than bliss

It's in greater supply

It's the warm familiar womb in which your mind can hide

As your open doors and portals

Walk the paved paths to offerings

Foiled predetermined neurological patterns

Like paper boats bound for the drains

You speak the incantations written on grey mortal walls

syllables tasting like blood in your mouth

You know absolution

You know mortallity

Reality slowly peeled layer by layer

outwards to the fringe where upon the altar of forgotten deities

the combustion of the self still vibrates

Dark flowers thrusting their thorns up

reaching where manifestations of the skies labour to fill the vacuum

You seek to explain the universe with numbers

Itch to fill in the final answer underlined twice

Like an infant you step into the first light at dawn

It's bright and bitter and sharp