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Abandoned Clamp

the vice cannot squeeze any tighter

bolts crushed under the benchmark

gather dust with nuts and lost screws

a DIY manual mocks arrested craft

I cannot hold it together much longer

limbo has me instead in its firm grip


machine oil lubricant is frozen despite

heated exchanges with my inner Self

short circuited when the fuse box stalled

the battery leaked current in the seizure

a few flickering brain waves remind me

that the power tool work shed is empty


a dark hound rests on my sunken shoulder

quite happy that I am the one on the leash

a personal dog leather collar with spikes

commands me to halt all resistance as it

only cuts deeper into my lacerated neck

while crows pick far too close to my eyes 


I try to smile in the face of this peril but

the grimace does not even reach my face

a lonely tear dangles in suspense at the

lowest end of a beaten brow and evaporates

teased out with no meaning other than fear

an out of joint limbo dancer in slow motion


a pantomime of hell plays out in my soul

epitaphs scribed in smeared heart blood

clotted the thrombus waiting for a final kill

while an embolus of nothingness fights

for instant release on its way to my brain

life support fidgets with receding resolve


infused with darkness and charcoal ink

I try to light what resembles some tinder

and ever so slowly an induced coma melts

fraught with ashes and suffocating ember

but an anthracite embrace is the only option

to clamp the vice into limbo rather than myself


21st December 2020

Copyright © Kai Michael Neumann

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