Poem No. 7: On knowing and letting yourself go

Do you know what makes me mad?
When what we've created from their prohibition
is seen -- and stolen. When our codes, earned
time and time again through struggles
nearly killing us (and us wishing they did),
are taken by those acting as if the code was theirs.

(And what happens, little do they know, is a big frothing poisonous mess without a remedy. Laughing gas. Helium filled lungs, speaking. Or worse, a sweetness that offers kindness, but only as a reward. Worse still, the plague.)

What's so truly upsetting about this is that my madness has nothing to do with anger.

And little do they know -
what's seen and stolen
does not work, will not
work, cannot work. It idles,
whips itself around like Nazgul;
unceasing, intaking intention
for all its own lack, obscuring
all that is authentic, genuine.

Appearing as a slickly, slimy lust,
or something else just as deadly -
this pretense of: Oh, trust me, I *know*
unearned and its ensuing trickery - a masquerade
of innocence, the tying of the shoe
right in front of you, not out of a rule breaking,
but of a making of that new rule: 

You aren't anything to me, not even a friend, and I decide what happens next. 

leaving no room for us or we or together or everybody or one or all or even nothing - precisely where the tying of a shoe had meaning beyond the libidinal economy - a real necessity, asking for only an acknowledgement, desirous or otherwise.

At the moment one gets this, its too late; now they want you, only after their infliction of pain through manipulation, intentional or not.

Am I straying too far from where you were?
Or am I saying what you were saying all along?
You know, this is all over my head.

I swear, I'm trying. I want to understand.
I know I'm getting there.

Let's keep it that way --

until we meet again.