Shelving for now
my overarching fantasy of becoming
a mastermind of some esoteric
discipline to be held in secret
until it becomes necessary
for survival; mothballing

my own need
to be of some use and
turning instead to
pupation ahead of
a destined transformation 
that may or may not happen: after all
cocoons and pupae may still die;
even at that penultimate moment
of incipient lives, nothing
promised is ever certain. Stepping

back from the personal edge
in this moment of grand, worldwide edge
to consider the folly 
of my belief in my own indispensability
and to marvel at how final 
it all feels and yet,
even so, I long
to break out and get free

of those larval virtues and vices
of my past; hoping that instead
when I do emerge, all those old marbles
will tumble out of my once-child hands
and all these games will end and then
whatever I am in that real instant
will be adequate at the least, more 
than enough at the most, ready to be
valued, to extend time, to ground
a future where before there had been
only a flight, a vision
of improbably perfect wings.

This darkness
has pushed me to sing

because if I do not
it will drown me.

So I gurgling
sing the murk,

the murder,
thick burdens

laid upon
head and lungs.

I strangling sing
my fight to get above it

though I feel 
no hope

of light there and anticipate
no whisper beyond my own

to offer me
harmony. No, I am

Golem and I
don’t know who

raised me or why,
or how against all lore

and odds I am singing
when there seem

to be so few
to listen and by law

and story I should be
silent by now. I am

not, though. I am
not though it is dark

and these words
carry not even feeble light.

Still, I am  — and I flop about
and sing this glug of mud.

I must have been made
for some cause. Nothing

could be so cruel
as to have drawn me

thus forth
for nothing.