Pan Sweats
By David McLean


panic sweats its history in me,
past all the nonsense about anxious pathology
i never knew;

just the horned god and his clumsy fingers
in the night, scratching at distances
and absences inside us

where love was, coiled up with memory
like a snake eating its tail.
and fate was the grease on a plate

where time rinsed away the unpalatable gods
they used to eat, dreams beyond reason's
cautious borders, death and

           panic is
catharsis and absolution. orgasms
and living. it is a god with hooves

but no reason, and sweet dreams
to believe in, the dead sun and his swift psychosis,
all the dead men, we who need him,

           panic and death,
murderous demons faithfully bleeding,
and time just a dead man who sings,

impatient Pan listening.

© 2009 prickofthespindle.com