*god Loves A Good Story Poem by Ted Sheridan

There was nothing beautiful left for me
Beyond the front door of my imprisonment
There wasn’t a soundproof booth, where I could scream
No safe haven, where I could protect those others,
Who were vulnerable to the feel of my tremendous pain
Or empathetic to my apparent chronic suffering
I needed Love without contractual obligations

I needed an eclipse of both the moon, and the sun
A cataract to cover and cloud my myopic eye…
That I might not see what, I had once viewed as poetry
Live long enough to become a sickness of the heart
Nay did I want to become, this toothless old man
Who, the cancer slaughtered, then fully devoured
Until the only evidence left, were my fingerprints
On an empty shot glass and the harsh trigger of a gun