My past days are frantically barking behind me,

And my present has presented me

With a world that never is.

In the last few weeks, I've struck a realisation,

An awakening of significance

That seems to ominously indicate

Like a rocking chair against a downpour of self-doubt-

That I will create tragedy

When my palate runs dry.

Yes, pluck it out of the refined honeysuckles

Of shimmering emotion and staggering dejection,

And wrench its being away from

Soggy, sepia evenings,

To offer it cheap lodging

Within my heart.

I don't know why my feelings

My emotions, my expectations

Of what a human as me is;

what he does, what he says, how he says it-

Are bashing against the membranes

Of a social-recluse drum

Pounding against the auditorium of my ribs,

Mocking what once was

A heart.

This cage, this confinement

Within the sinews of my own achievement

Pillars crafted out of psychological upheaval,

Paintings carved out of watercolor friendship;

Walls of mahogany happiness-

Everything of my own making;

Shall be my own forever

In a final, breathtaking

Collapse.

Until then,

All I can boast of as staying

With me,

Accompanying my pretentious melancholy,

Is the languid stirring of the clock

Parodying my drum

That parodies a heart

Encased within an embodiment of pretence

A sad poet by choice

A vector of tragedy,

That duels through the midnight

With an enemy he has tethered

To the humdrums of the cosmos

Using his penchant for the unhappy

As sturdy, salty rope.

A poet in duel with his own midnight,

Eyes and ears glued to

The unforgiving ticks of his wall clock

Stern, but fretted with an occasional stutter-

Silent, supple, systematic.