I Sing of Myself, The Man, he who, exiled by his father,

first came from the streets of Rock City, and ended

on a silvery pebbled path flecked with sunlight,

where Shady now walks, cooled by swaying trees.

By the will of God, by a cruel mother’s touch,

he suffered from poisons, poverty, hatred, until

the words poured from his dry, tired mouth like a well.

He brought them to schoolyards, to basements,

dark rooms with stained floors: he sang ‘til he screamed,

he screamed ‘til he grew hoarse. He couldn’t sleep so he dreamt,

but when he dreamt, he couldn’t sleep. Muse, tell me

the cause for his nightmares, his grief.

Love was a clenched fist that choked on his heart

‘til it bubbled and spattered and slowed to a stop.

Can there only be anger in the mind of M.M.,

or will he lose himself in the music, the moment,

will he own it and never let it go?

Sing, O Goddess, the anger of Marshall, son of the same,

that he wore like a scar on his face and carried as a

cross on his back, the wood dappled and moist with rot.

‘Tis a weight shared by many, but it cripples and blinds,

breeding only self-destruction and breaking all real binds.

Alas, this was the fate of the son of Marshall.

But he dragged himself panting through the journey of life,

‘til he lay sprawled, face down in his shit within a forest dark.

Muse, through you he saw beauty in the ragged sublime:

a hazy depression, a shirt soaked in blood, the numb, mineral taste

when a fist met his jaw. Life was ugly, and so his

words would also be, because he’d only speak the truth,

and it would set the contemporary youth free.