Angel Dear

i look down
            into my
                  bottomless pit,
for somehow I’ve a hold of these
flimsy and leaking
social flotation-aids,
and,
downward-steering,
leadening,
I sight a tragic poet-angel.

Like everyone else I’ve come to realise,
she has my quizzical,
devastated
face/mask
on:
the one that looks for an understanding reflection
constantly
off that mirror-stranger,
the one
whose only salvation is a blast of congenial,
an half-parody,
crinkling of the eyes, and
nervous attempting-to-reassure smile,
seeking to be familiar,
(or near enough to self),
to be at least knowable,
contemned,
but knowable.

Internally known and
reknown throughout the world-
(big paranoiac crowd-in-the-head of a world)-
Poet-angel

I feel your presence approaching,

you offer no condolence
but the sensuality of complaint,

a whinge through art and letters,

the acceptance of dire irresponsibility:
the secret, safe and small,
of madness…
(In your own little way madness) -
that tenuous self knowledge -
and acceptance of uncomfortable surprises,
(as no friend yet ever could
without too much judgment),
it is, after all, the bottom.

And its hard for them to believe your beautiful promise
because of the old entrapment/involvement myth there is to enact.

To see if they dare,
(and they usually don’t),
maybe they see the warning,
yawning, fathoms down,
bottomless drop,
in some glimpse of a devastated face,
and they don’t,
nor never will,
know the poet-angel:
she is such a cliché
anyway.