Animal Within

This restless energy driving me insane

Can’t purge it, cant satisfy it

Can’t escape it

Must go with it

Drive it, challenge it, embrace it

This energy in me

That craves usage

It doesn’t allow me to

Sit still, read, masturbate, ignore, comatose

I fight it and that’s what it wants

A fight

The animal within

Needs to fight, to hunt

To breathe unclean air, to run

It hunts me because I’m all it can reach

Inside these walls, inside this skin

This still air

Stale stench of wasted sweat

Air-conditioned summer heat

And cabin fever

I’ll wash it all away

Then give it what it wants

True sweat

Animal bleeding out and burning

At both ends, I’ll taste it

As it tastes its life through me

ⓒ 2004 Shawn Michael Quinn