What I Do Not Have

Like a corrupted cornucopia 

Spewing fermented fruits

I squander daily abundances 

On self-sown squalor

Lamenting only

What I do not have 

Best Laid Plans

Long shadows creep from darkened skies,

Transporting storms to brooding eyes.

Swirling flotsam collides with hope

And fraying threads remain of rope.

As tempests churn within your heart,

Ambitious designs twist apart.

Best laid plans are best laid aside:

The sun won’t care what you abide.

And yet

That self-same sun dispels these clouds,

Lighting new routes that routine shrouds.

Darkness

In the darkness left behind

The mold and rot expand

Bursting through forgotten crimes

Fouling all I’ve planned.

I fumble towards the sunlight,

Seeking some redemption,

Trying to eradicate

My own bleak invention.

But no illumination

Can stem the mushrooming,

Or stanch the creeping blackness

That comes with all I bring.

Depression

At the bottom of a well

Filled with tapioca pudding

I contemplate past choices

While silently brooding. 

There is no point recounting

The calamities that befell,

Or shady circumstances

That dropped me down this well.

Such melancholy sunshine

As ventures down this murky pit

Meanders without purpose

Until it is unlit.

The pudding’s thick and tepid.

The sickly air is denser still.

I slog around in circles,

I’ve endless time to kill.

High above my wallowing,

Faint voices murmur their concern.

They offer some assistance

To speed my safe return.

“Return to what?”  I question,

As I dismiss their promised aid:

This absurd abyss embraces

The nothing that I’ve made.

An Unwanted Visitor

Do I hear your bony fingers

Rattling against my door?

Such a lonesome rat-tat-tat-tat,

Just like the year before?

I have drawn the blinds completely,

And retired to my bed,

While fantasizing wistfully

That you would find me dead.

Yet stubbornly you knock again,

Refusing to depart,

Knowing that with each labored breath

I lose a little heart.

At last I crawl from my hiding,

I shuffle through the dark,

I reluctantly escort you

Into my dwelling stark.

We sit beside the burnt out hearth

Faces draped in shadows,

Quietly eyeing each other,

Each in our shabby clothes.

You smirk at my dim surroundings,

Clearing your nasty throat.

You present me with a ledger

And then begin to quote.

The entries run countless pages:

You monotone each one,

Moving from newest to oldest,

Until the reading’s done.

Methodically progressing

You highlight every crime,

Enumerating all my faults,

While backtracking through time.

At the very last and oldest

You clear your throat again,

Then lean towards me and whisper

“Here’s where it all began.”

And the day next to that entry?

The day I've come to scorn?

The day you choose to torment me?

The day that I was born.

A Conversation With My Brain

“Why do you waste your dwindling time

With fanciful diversions?

Dawdling directionless on

Ill-conceived excursions.

“You squander all the gifts I give,

Send me darkened places,

Fill me with perverse distractions:

Screaming, helpless faces.

“And look at how your belly bloats

Like some distended whale,

While lazy muscles atrophy

Beneath your skin so pale.”

“I’ve heard all your complaints before.

Each day you say the same.

Just let me wallow in my filth,

I’m tired of this game.

“This world was never made for me,

I’m like some ill-fit cog

Wobbling on a rusted axle.

So end your monologue.”

“Self-pity in your rhyming verse

Is hardly entertaining.

Who do you think would want to read

Such dull self-complaining?”

An Atheist Finds Salvation

Sometimes a stubborn atheist

Can learn a thing or two

About the many miracles

Love’s mysteries can prove.

No angels reside in heaven,

Yet you lay by my side,

Casting out my homemade demons,

Forgiving me my pride.

You take me by my grubby hand,

And ease my burdened mind.

You mercifully relieve my wounds

With gentle words so kind.

Forget the Holy Trinity,

Confucius and Ganesh.

Fat Buddha never broke a smile

With glowing cheeks so fresh.

Great wonders foolish men have built,

Screaming their devotion:

Sacrificing doomed armadas

Across the deadly ocean.

And while I laugh at all their deeds,

Scoffing at martyr’s pyre,

I’d build the grandest monuments

To meet your heart’s desire.