Fugue State Penitentiary

I have been running since the day I was born:
grinding the cord between my gums,
spitting blood at the midwives
and cartwheeling down the corridors
of some suburban hospital.
With barely an inkling of the wolves at the door
and the slow affection of panthers.

I have been running since the day I fell in love
with a vision of half my days,
with an ideal of home and family,
with the passion that novelty nurtures
and experience extinguishes.
Blissfully ignorant that to stray too close to the sun
brings the sudden, swooping doom of Icarus.

I have been running since the day I first tasted
oblivion on the lips of dark angels,
on the lips of glass coffins:
forged with tongues of rage and pity,
forged in the fires of a one horse town.
Whilst hiding, shaking, in plain sight behind
the straw that broke this mammal's back.

I have been running since the day I woke up weeping
to discover myself in the same place,
to discover that I had travelled three feet
in thirty years of running, always running,
within this home that I call prison.
But liberated now in finding some small happiness
behind these bars. For a while at least.

Russell J Turner - June 2009