Take your marks!

You see it. Go, it says. You do not hear.

You know it’s time, and the dam breaks, shouting.

It’s hard just to move, float, in the crowding,

Then the rush starts. Remember what to do.

It’s easy, now, riding on emotion

The good kind, so far. And the pain sneaks in.

It’s always been, but weighted, before, by

The little drops of success, only tastes

Robbed from every pass outside, every cruel

Lurch downhill through the waves and past them. And

You smell the real thing, blindly, hundreds

Of little death-steps still ahead but it

Smells good, through the burning. Not an end but a

Win. The only end that’s acceptable.