I No Longer Know If I Am Mad

I no longer know if I am mad
Or if I'm feigning it to cover my own mediocrity
I sometimes feel like a fell wizened necromancer
Labouring at his pleasure
Performing his liturgy as one long consumed by ashes.

Factory fumes nourishing the dreams of the cosmopolite
Affectionate longing for white coats, auditoriums and blackboard dust
Spiraling walkways, webs of concrete, bricks and mirrored glass
I no longer know if I have experienced passion/love/despair/hate
Was it only socially induced behaviour?
Like long forgotten twisted poetry
Gleaned from mouldy parchment.

Pain is always more real than bliss
It's in greater supply
It's the warm familiar womb in which your mind can hide
As your open doors and portals
Walk the paved paths to offerings
Foiled predetermined neurological patterns
Like paper boats bound for the drains
You speak the incantations written on grey mortal walls
Syllables tasting like blood in your mouth
You know absolution
You know mortallity.

Reality slowly peeled layer by layer
Outwards to the fringe where upon the altar of forgotten deities
The combustion of the self still vibrates
Dark flowers thrusting their thorns up
Reaching where manifestations of the skies labour to fill the vacuum
You seek to explain the universe with numbers
Itch to fill in the final answer underlined twice
Like an infant you step into the first light at dawn
It's bright and bitter and sharp.