Ice

Encased in a February

labyrinth of ice,

my spastic crazy chipping

at the melting warmth beyond.

I haunt my flash frozen

nightmarish winter dream,

a ghost of roads not taken,

a spineless spectre of bloodless flesh.

My boyhood filled with climbing trees

and kites strung taut against the sky,

I grew up to something else unsaid;

ground down to something less unseen.

-----

The ambiance of emergency

room chaos pumping out my stomach,

fruit of concrete glassine dances

down back alley homemade drugstores.

I'm out of phase with time and place,

wobbly on the hospital gurney,

until I take my blinders off

of ambulatory sanity

and drop back into luminescent

summers running through the sprinkler,

winters sledding, snow fort battles,

drunken, choking smoke haze household,

boozed and battered fish and chips

and cookie dough raw as the nerve endings

I gnaw on.

And on.

And on.