Mad

That I shall go mad
is of no doubt and little consequence.
Shall I gape and gibber,
cavort and caper, running
naked under the whisper of aspen
leaves on summer nights
while the moon rains
down stolen sunlight and laughs
with me in my wounded daze?

How shall I go that broken
and slanted way?
Will I mirror my hurt to a barbed
and sharp
world? Make sainthood from sin
health from the scarred ruins of pox,
lay my hands over your wounds
as if heaven would listen
to me, feel you quiver and shudder
as I suck
your sins and china fractured wounds of the heart inside?

Or will my madness spill
like joyful sobs at births, like my love
for you, like my blood
my scars, my tears like salt
in the sea, across the earth
as if whip cracks on flesh?

Is my madness
my own, my penance
my beautification to bear?
A martyrdom for the wicked,
where I feel the press and prick
of a knife at my neck
wondering at the pull
of the blade across my throat
the point pushing through my larynx
as I gurgle a last prayer,
a hymn to the fading night sky?

No. I well know the measured pace
and dark abyssal
courses my madness runs;
it is the sluggish scrape
of glaciers dragging scars
into granite under miles of grinding
ice, it is the deepening chill
of final nights as stars wink
their last and wither,
it is the sweet and saving
welcoming of a slow
and freezing
end when fires snuff out.