eaten up with rancor
I am sitting in my spot:
a puddle of worms, dank,
dimly lit, lined with shame and anger--
trying to decide if my cage is real
or worth sitting in, or worth escaping
My physical heart dwells on two things
and beats wildly with only one--
death in the face of the meaningless of life, coldly considered;
and revenge, marked daily by the words
"let me put it this way"
when I try to explain myself
just for practice in my head.
But is my cage door
blowing open at the slightest zephyr's touch
and am I blind to that sight?
Is this all self-inflicted,
a result of selfish jealousy?
I can't help the way I feel.
Some doubt whether I have feelings--
they are extant, bruisable,
and bruised due to some cause or another.
Is it wrong to lay the blame at least partially
at someone else's feet?
Due to past experience, I know they don't
feel they've done anything wrong.
Rejection comes into play, politely dressed up in
respectable individuals with the same selfishness which characterizes me,
posing as ignorance of their alienating actions.
Or am I making too much of this again?
Am I reading wrongly into the simple budding of a
new and wonderful complexity among those towards whom I harbor such resentment?
This is too unsimplistic for me.
My injured ego and scorched heart want me to go into hiding
to lick my wounds;
they like me to stay in my cage.
Another part of me compels me to forget and look forward
to happier times.
A little pessimistic cloud obscures the sunlight
shining in on my cell, compelling me to forget about it;
or perhaps it is the cruel jailer hauling me out
and telling me to reinvolve myself in the real world
outside my grimly comfortable pity.
My heart isn't in it anymore--the sunshine is only beautiful
when it is dying against the bricks, like a soldier shot by a firing squad;
the food isn't exciting, the creativity has stopped,
human interactions have become stagnant,
and I realize as I think in my so-called luxurious
surroundings,
that it will be like this forever,
and that nobody really cares at the present,
and I dejectedly consider my dead faith in everything good.
So there are a few questions I ponder while lying, instead of in comfort,
on the hard mat in my imaginary prison:
Will this jealousy, causer of misery and compulsion to live further,
run its course and weed itself out of my life?
And what will I live for then?
Or is it sapping my will to live? Or does it matter?