WHEN KEYS COLLIDE

Inside this skeleton beneath what’s relevant,

To what you come to mold and try to hold,

I lock my heart and with my chest I guard,

A cage, my rage, fended by smoke and gates.

Outside walkers, passers-by, passing by

Do not climb my fence and from this hence

Are unaware of what ware I wear

Behind walls where my tree branches fall, 

Blocking, breaking halls that hide my pride,

The love that I denied.

Sometimes I wonder if I wander

Deeper waters will I sink, or will I drink,

See blue depressants or incandescent 

Winds that take me high above my lies

To housing nests where I can rest

Without my best or any jest just

Self--pale, stale, tooth-and-nail Self.

But then I think from off the brink

And fall back to halls where

I am led--a light ahead--to doors

That bore in my mind holes that I unlock

And then I see in front of me a choice to go,

Refuse, say no, clear the smoke or hold the choke,

When I feel in my hands a key that brands

Love without demands to go furthermore, 

Find other halls of what’s in store.

From the ground I stand, passing by

Doors and corridors until I hear the sound

That’s crowned behind a wallowed cry.

When I unlock the lock I cannot talk,

For my ribs are broken open for a token--

No, a bronze key that stabs at my heart.

Alarmed, unharmed, I see the skeleton, 

Become once dead, now alive again.

From the ground I kneel, letting,

The key heal, without regretting, me.

Adorned and formed, I am now reborn.