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?”