Sink, if you must, in the slough of despond.
Make your one and only being
victim to the universal reasons for despair.

I choose a level ground, carrying
my own blood-red lacerations
over my allotted landscape.

I refuse to contaminate the country
of your face, your deep, zaftig voice
that drives my ardor beyond the bleak.

Music is not a primer for evasion,
that handy cloak to sheath the thousand
wounds that scar the soul and bone.

And yet, as the shapely notes invade
my viscera I willingly succumb,
a prisoner elevated, tasting the stars.

*this is the third and final in a three-day series of poems The Opiate is publishing by Peggy Aylsworth. Read Day 1 here and Day 2 here.