Poem – No Brakes by Jade Blackmore

He followed a straight line from
Long, humid Rust Belt weekends
And thunderstorm beatdowns
To a deposit of decay,
A past his prime rendering.

It only took a costume change,
The printed page,
And a few drops of blood-red paint
To separate the genius
From the criminal.

There’s no limit to exploration, the shaman said.
But he was born to find the end point,
A clichéd and public wall,
And crash into it
Like Norma Desmond on acid.