I No Longer Know If I Am Mad

I no longer know if I am mad
 or if I'm feigning it to cover my own mediocrity
 I sometimes feel like a fell wizened necromancer
 labouring at his pleasure
 performing his liturgy as one long consumed by ashes
 Factory fumes nourishing the dreams of the cosmopolite
 Affectionate longing for white coats, auditoriums and blackboard dust
 Spiraling walkways, webs of concrete, bricks and mirrored glass
 I no longer know if I have experienced passion/love/despair/hate
 Was it only socially induced behaviour?
 Like long forgotten twisted poetry
 gleaned from mouldy parchment
 Pain is always more real than bliss
 It's in greater supply
 It's the warm familiar womb in which your mind can hide
 As your open doors and portals
 Walk the paved paths to offerings
 Foiled predetermined neurological patterns
 Like paper boats bound for the drains
 You speak the incantations written on grey mortal walls
 syllables tasting like blood in your mouth
 You know absolution
 You know mortallity
 Reality slowly peeled layer by layer
 outwards to the fringe where upon the altar of forgotten deities
 the combustion of the self still vibrates
 Dark flowers thrusting their thorns up
 reaching where manifestations of the skies labour to fill the vacuum
 You seek to explain the universe with numbers
 Itch to fill in the final answer underlined twice
 Like an infant you step into the first light at dawn
 It's bright and bitter and sharp