Orphan

Motherless born,
passed among a long line
of wet nurses and nannies,
Staring and sucking at a
variety of irises & a chaos of aureoles,
he formulated an inchoate image
of a shifting face of love.

Later, to escape the claustration
of his stunted and sundered carapace,
he attempted to staunch the haunch's wound,
quelling his canablistic urge
in a feast and fury of erotic film and literature.
Apocatastasis the apotheosis of his loneliness,
diffusion of purpose his only recourse.

Fixed like a cat on the question
of in or out, or in and out, or at least
the mystery of entrances and exits.

For him, breath could be drawn
only in submersion or submission.
Fear and shame gave him gills.
He found his own ways to bury
and exhume himself.