by Luke McGinty

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Tension boiled stress

caught in youthful throats

before emboldened thoughts fly free

toiled quickly, burning out

in expectation and repression of

Ambitious premade lives

cloying culture driving towards perfection

pillars lofted above and below

holding the status quo in place

driving the maybe youthful rat race

in the near not beating hearts of

Young men so tamed and so beaten

over a lifetime, from birth, into submission

free beasts, maimed and pampered

carved like stone

as faulted flesh

and flawed beautiful heart, soul, bone

is scarred to stoic, solid, unerring, unmoving

marble

poised, nobled and ruined

above the rest looking in jealousy of them

who trade humanity for supposed dignity as

Testament to the merits of a life

spent spurning the human ice and animal fire

that make a man

shape his fate

and fuel his passion

in the dark of night

and the winter of life

dead now too soon in the halls of

A place, mulling once with laughter

then not long after

ringing with

a morgue silence