The Sculptor That Was

Something is fundamentally wrong.

Unless his blue eyes were created only to look

Downward,

At a ground that can hardly support their murky weight.

Unless it is the norm for his spine to declare a strike

On the rest of his feeble body,

Bending him lower than his grief.

And unless his skin

Being devoid of hue

Is something ordinary for this

Aching soul then

Something is fundamentally wrong.

So, she taps on his back with a rap of her pencil and asks,

As soft as a laugh but with none of its humor,

“Are you all right?”

And is he?

When the sides of his brain exhibit sibling rivalry on a earth-shattering scale,

Two forces like hurricanes

Whip doubt and fear over

His holy kingdom of thought, its citizens: emotion,

Shaken.

Left only to shout, “Anarchy!” to a unrelenting sky.

When the people around him are nothing more than

Disturbing monsters

Their roars of insults and savage claws of hatred, are

Scathing swords of conquest over his self.

Backed into a corner, he mingles with

His own schizophrenia, wondering what ideas

External to him

About him

Haunting him

Are real.

When his spirit, once white clay,

Can only form itself incorrectly

Abandoned by its sculptor

Who took up soldering gun and torch

To form a metal

Reality.

And the vivid paint of his passion

No longer vibrantly splatters his soul

And his life

They are separated into primary colors

Poignant ghettoization

Of the cruelest kind.

When

All things are considered.

While it is admirable, it is laughable, for this girl to have rational

To not have touched his palpable pain

To not have seen the fallible animal he has become

To have asked this self-destructing cannibal

Of himself

To himself

By his self

If he was all right.

Because something is fundamentally wrong.

But with a flick of his wrist

His dismisses his own salvation,

Pounding like a fist but without the punch.

“I’m fine.”

He says.

“All right.”

She says.

And they move along.