It’s not that I’m mad,

surely that is beyond

the easiest of conversations,

for you have to be mad

to work with words here.

It’s more in the way that I cannot

find the Hamster

that flew off the wheel long ago

so that I can at least bury

its final remains and give the poor creature

the final shred of honour

befitting the way it held its own

in the company

of the down but not outs

and the sensationally fallen.

 

That poor Hamster

worked its way to death

like exhaustion

and slowly gave up the ghost,

it could hold no more

and just set the wheel on auto-pilot

and with a middle digit firmly raised

in my direction

decided that in the end,

it was better to spin

completely out of the harness

and die free, panting hard,

watching the brain fry and overload

as auto-pilot became unstoppable

and unattainable to the long term sanity

of its former owner

and how it laughed

until its own heart gave out.

Ian D. Hall 2015