A Portrait of the Poet as an Escape Artist
by Steve Cambron

Part of my affliction is pretending
that all is possible until ten o’clock.
Reason is a lazy constable at dawn,
difficult in this light to take stock
of which world I have woken in.
The one ruled by unpaid bills and paradigms
or the one where gravity claims no victims?
Where Icarus reinvents the dream.
Difficult with these wings to ferret out
the feasible from what is not. No scheme
too great. Like Houdini, I smirk at padlocks
laugh at straightjackets, suspend disbelief,
untie myself from the knowing and the knots
to step from this windy precipice, spread-eagled toward the sea.
The way is littered with wrecks of failed attempts.
Another part of my affliction is ignoring the debris.

The complicated physics of escape
are difficult to explain, best ascribed to luck
and a disregard for established shapes.
Invisible to wife, family and friends
I avert the impending sabotage long enough
to fly a while before a harsher light calls my bluff.