Sipping from a glass of bourbon
....that could use a zest of lemon
I am held hostage by my desire to escape
and therefore a prisoner of this room....
both my legs have become useless
as my mind crawls around the floor
seeking refuge in the dark corners
where I pray.... petitioning for a deadly virus
to end my obsessing over self....
Compelled by distant others to connect
I seek a common protocol before
attempting to modem digital images
that will depict me as being lucid or intelligible....
God forbid....I should succumb
to any reality or objective truth
Concerned by my degree of ominous dread
as 'To be or not to be'.... the questioned
I become the accused and the interrogated
as well as the subjective evil interrogator
Life for me used to be so fabulously simple
when as a young soldier of fortune
it was 'Kill or be killed' rather than
the death sentence of being
a bi-gone veteran of a bastard war
I have out of a need to survive society
pronounced myself guilty of many heinous war crimes
yet in truth I have committed only one
and that one being against my alter ego....
The poet in me survives but as required
he perpetually suffers the sins of his father
and of the violent world around him
While one picks up his deadly weapons
the other picks up his all but passive pen
in a contentious battle for the freedom of survival....
Emperor.....Let the games begin
To the winner...shall go the spoils
To this encounter there is no end____

Sipping from a glass of bourbon
....that could use a zest of lemon
I lament___

2007 ©tedgsheridan

Ted Sheridan

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