Responsibility

I know.

It's irresponsible of me.

I ought to get help,
find someone to fix this for me.

Or I ought to soldier on,
knowing that perseverence brings honor.

This is my problem. I should take care of it.
Everybody has problems,
but everybody has to face the world.

I ought to seize my destiny;
I ought to assume responsibility.

Instead...

How about if I give up,
and the rest of you ignore me?

How about if I withdraw completely
and hand over my duties to someone else?

How about if I dissolve all obligation,
so that I no longer have promises to break?

What I Want

What I want most of all
is for the world to accept that I am going home for a nap.

What I want more than anything,
even more than I want to sleep,
is a reprieve from life.

Life is stronger than I am.
The day is longer than I can stay awake.
Work is a high wave of blunt objects to bash my head.

I am almost in tears
for no reason at all
except that eleven hours of sleep
weren't enough,
and that I'm hungry
but no food has any taste
and that the pain in my stomach
is good because it is an expression
of the pain in my heart.

There is pain in my neck and shoulders, too,
but when I try to release the tension,
I grow faint
I am breathless, my head spins
There is a weight behind my eyes
that makes them dull and sluggish.
I want to put something in my mouth,
curl up,
close my eyes,
and suck until I fall asleep.

There is too much pretending here,
trying to respond to jokes in kind
and ending with nothing but nervous laughter,
smiling with too much giddiness,
speaking with too much brightness.

I simulate mania.

It would be selfish and unkind of me
to tell others about this mood--
it just makes them uncomfortable and unsure.

So, I pretend to be happy, friendly, normal, sincere.

What I want more than anything else in the world
is to be manic.
And if I'll never feel that way again,
I'd rather die.

I do not dare ask God
to grant my wish.
I know that justice demands retribution,
that there must be balance,
that I must pay for the ecstasy
with utter despair.

What I want is
to stop
wanting.

To Joseph Berglinger

I ever loved you, and I love in vain,
Yet knowing you will not return my love,
And I would not for any man refrain
From love and the futility thereof.

Your thoughts and aspirations give me hope;
They hail the evening when the stars awake.
You are the Art, the Truth’s romantic scope.
You are emotion, and like me, you ache.

And when I realized you are contrived,
My hopes were dashed to think you were not you.
Perhaps no one like you are could have thrived.
My solace—that a soul imagined you.

Like me, he wrote of bright, unmingled Truth
As if my aching spirit he foresaw.
But of course, he died in untried youth,
As do all men, it seems, who earn my awe.

Sonnet IV: In the Land of the Fisher King

The land that once was fertile falls a-waste,
And where the grail, of which I might inquire?
Why, prophets false, deny we are disgraced?
The Fisher King must falter to retire.

The foolish ask which sin has caused this blight,
But all sins are and each sin is to blame.
I flush to think that in my fear I might
One question ask and finish all that came.

Still in my heart, the stirrings of the quest
Entice me deeper still into the drought.
Deceptions will obscure our god’s request.
And is it here? I long to seek it out.

To follow close my fate is ever cursed,
And yet another man will find it first.