1.
the public thinking 
that he was 
one of the good ones

opposed
his own idea of himself as
snapped bone

and his face at perpetual
war
with his faith

his doubt
busting out all over as if he
had become

movie musical month of June
as if he 
could be sanitized through

the magic
of popular art bestowing genius
upon monsters

in part because they
expect
monstrosity in their geniuses

because it keeps 
all the people who aren’t monsters 
from uncovering

their own genius

2.
when his ghost
was laid away at last
and the myth
of who he’d been
was permanently
supplanted
with the truth

when they filed
his work away at last
in a locked drawer
reserved for what was once
thought genius and now
was forensically reviewed
for sinister clues

though he could not breathe 
any longer 
he held what little vapor he still had 
tight within
and told himself it was long past time
to set this right
fade away to reincarnate perhaps
at some better time