Corday's Blush

The severed head of Charlotte, freshly shorn,
Still burned with crimson heat beneath the slap,
A sudden spark to close the violent gap
Between the iron blade and quiet morn.
The sneering rogue who struck the cooling cheek
Awoke a silent fire, fierce and bleak,
Before the fading mind could die reborn.

Across the scaffold, blood and marble blend,
As dark directives urge the final leap,
Where sovereign voices guide the soul to sleep,
And draw the weary martyr to her end.
This hidden master calls from shadowed halls,
Where every whisper breaks as darkness falls,
And bids the broken spirit to descend.

Shared Elixir

A tide rises, white and thick,
sliding between trembling lips,
and they catch it, taste it, pass it along
like liquid fire, sacredly obscene.

Drinking Through the Days

Retroactive adjustment: 

Was drinking non-stop for almost twenty days. Thankfully I didn't die.

End of August

For a while, I have been having trouble at work. Small mistakes, again and again. Things I ordinarily knew how to do have acquired the peculiar difficulty of a foreign language. Stress magnifies everything, and the medication I was taking seems to complicate matters further. I was struggling in vain to find the right chemical arrangement for a mind increasingly difficult to inhabit.

Eventually, I had what might politely be called a psychological break. Work became frightening. Ordinary failures assumed the proportions of omens. I was exhausted, ashamed, and increasingly unable to distinguish the immediate problem from everything I imagined it meant.

I have since recovered... somewhat.

The circumstances have improved. I have found a little more stability, a little more distance from the wreckage, and some sense that a bad season need not become a permanent geography.

So I am going to try again.