would you like to save?

when I was very young
life was often too much to bear,
and so I would escape into the
realm of video gaming.
the dragons, damsels,
incantations, and lepers
fascinated me because they
were so unlike the Real
I had written on shammed
fibrous cloth.

in every town, my heroic
alter ego would rejuvenate, always
at a church, a temple, and
as with many things,
I have now created a super ego
modeled with much the same affinity;
when it gets too hot—

there must be an escape from the fires;
a book, an instrument,
concocting words as music
and vice-versa.

I become mortally
drained; the monsters and their
hollow voices do it.
so like that brave necromancer,
I drag my cowardly hind to this church
to refresh, refocus, rebuild—
so that I might step back into
that awful light
and face Them all over again.