"When I am writing, I am trying to find out who I am…" –Maya Angelou
What do you complain about the most?
There’s the heat, and there’s the cold
To be young, and to be old
There’s the ever nearing feeling
Of eternal isolation
There’s horror come of company
The unknown that you want from me
And the greater dread of knowing
All I could never give alone
There’s the day and there’s the night
There is wrong and there is right
And in the end it’s everything
That life meant me to be shown.
A world unknown beyond my own
Shall tease, and taunt, and terrify;
And all I’ve done, what truths I’ve drawn
Are there only to vilify.
Don’t make me wake up to the nightmare
Don’t let me rise only to fall
I know what awaits me out there
Why be there at all?
Three farmers stand around and stare
At the monstrosity looking up at them:
Three legs crouched, the fourth but air
Its white fur patched and standing up.
The farmers stare and haw and hem,
And dance the subject ’round:
One says that they must kill it dead,
Else the chickens won’t again be found.
Another claims that it’s in pain,
This strange and broken thing;
Only in loss might there be gain —
Best to take its neck and wring.
The last declares it will be fed
For it is not what’s left to them
To decide what dies, whether and when,
But to choose life here and now.
It’s better when you’re gone
And I am not supposed to judge
When still so much of me is wrong
But I can almost see the future
When your shadow isn’t quite as long.
All I have is window shopping:
Refuge of the inane.
I can stare in hope and wonder;
All I’ll have to show for it is pane.
I like to believe you once existed
Before life was something dark and twisted
Now I find it best to leave today
In the murky shadows of my yesterday.
The world is filled with people trying
And people living, and people dying
The world is filled with worlds colliding
People selling, people buying
The world is filled with wheels still turning
Past people with their houses burning
Through all despair and endless yearning
Over each and every threat unnerving
Whether afraid, whether unswerving
The world is filled with people trying
And people falling, people rising
Who am I to keep denying
That I can do no different?
Only cement ghosts
Haunting pathways and your mind
Are the signs of life
My life’s reduced to fractions
The circle hanging on the wall
Shows my portion getting ever smaller
When I look at it at all
My escape’s inching towards completion
My stumble’s near become a fall
I find that I’m defined by wasted time
And all I can do is stall.
Writer In Retrospect 