Cataphract
by Sam M. Phillips

You haunt my mind,
With wicked web you bind,
An unkind presence with hot tendril fingers,
The steaming mass that lingers
And singes me with heat,
A feat to keep myself focused,
Instead I am concussed
By heavy blow of thought,
I ought to be able to forget,
I cannot be bought,
My freedom sought,
Yet I’m ravaged and damaged,
Calamity fatally charges me with crime,
You are the voice of whinge and whine,
A line of spectres from my past,
Queuing up and seeking to cast
Voodoo spells of hell hounding me
With a pounding sea
Of monstrous waves,
Burying me in collapsed caves,
Nothing saves me from it twisting,
Round and round,
Down and down,
Further underground,
Into the base of my skull,
Bright thoughts become dull,
Cannot annul a false fantasy
That takes hold of me,
The fake finery,
A gallows gown,
A hallowed sound,
Loud and proud,
To be my keeper,
Makes me meeker
Than I am,
So I slam
My foot down now,
Call foul
And roll up from under
My own blunder,
Seek a way out,
Yet all I can do is shout,
Calling into a hollow head abyss,
A landscape on which I must subsist,
Trapped and sapped of power,
But I will not cower,
I am not low,
I am the crow,
Crying red rum murder,
No less absurd or abstract
Than conspicuous cataract,
Obscuring the trite tact,
It’s not a fact,
I am the noble dreaming knight,
Destined to stand and fight,
My own thoughts the foe,
Spectre muse filled with woe,
A doleful, soulful journey
As I spasm and choke upon the gurney.

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