Man, I really hate

to vituperate

I can't recuperate

nor can I ennumerate

All the mistakes

and the many aches

I'm a disgrace

An affront to be effaced

I try, I fail

I seek to no avail

I cry, I wail

I continue to flail

But...

I will awake

and I will not quake

I will undertake

All for Your sake

I'll try some more

I'll fight the war

This life's a chore

That I must explore

You give me hope

That I may cope

I walk the tightrope

Not knowing the full scope

I see flowers scattered in an unkempt garden

A beautiful mess, I must beg your pardon

How do I identify with this, Lord and Master?

This evocative catastrophe, this gorgeous disaster

There is much I know I don't know

Life is as such in the ebb and flow

So many things I know nothing about

Yet so little I disbelieve or totally doubt

As I gaze into the empty abyss

I see flutters of color and moments of bliss

As the abyss stares back into me

I wonder what it thinks it sees

My crystal ball says "signs point to no"

I have shaken it many times and it's always so

My magnum opus will be my swan song

and the onus is on me to not do it wrong

My autobiography was written by a ghost writer

My calligraphy written by the hand of a pale rider

Not worrying, not wondering, and not losing heart

Not scurrying, not blundering, and doing my part

Pondering the cosmos and contemplating fate

Re-working my ethos and embracing the wait

How are you, are you under the weather?

I hope no one has stolen your thunder

Don't face the day with a white feather

Don't let this life rip you asunder

Come rain or shine, it'll be a breeze

Cloud nine always has a silver lining

Life can be harder than math in Chinese

While the stars take their time aligning

Take a breath, throw caution to the wind

And soon you'll be right as rain

This storm in a teacup will quickly end

It's just a gust and not a hurricane

As I lay sleeping, I dreamed of a caravan

Chased by a hydra and a ten foot bogeyman

As I slumbered, I saw a desert moon descending

Monster lumbered as my arms were extending

In my quiescent state, I murmured inaudibly

Then I defended the procession most laudably

In my night fantasy, my strikes had no strength

My fists had no speed and my reach had no length

My nocturnal imagination had surely run amok

I lay awe struck like a sitting duck with bad luck

Was it something I ate? The residue of the day?

Was it guilt of past mistakes or something I didn't say?

As my nightmare unraveled and I awoke

I ruminated on all the feelings it evoked

As I shook loose the cobwebs and gathered my wits

I raised a middle finger to my internal abyss

Fairly

Squarely

Rarely

Barely

Shot from the hip fairly, squarely true

Loaded clip but, rarely, barely drew

Long have I thought

"Where am I really from?"

And long was I taught

That I was just one of some

My genes make me a mutt

but my source gives me pedigree

The cloth from which I'm cut

Was sewn amidst the heavenly

Irish, Spanish, and Welsh

Are just descriptions

Of this rented thing I call my "self"

At times, they're even encryptions

The sparkling hoar frost on the twigs

Appear as silver in the waning light

Miniature icicles form on the sprigs

As I delight in the hidden and recondite

The great imponderables to the erudite

glisten like gold just out of reach

Dancing like snowflakes just before midnight

With arcane insights to teach

As I freeze in the vast and dark breach

Great snow drifts begin to form

I plead with the heavens, nay, I beseech

"Give me the wisdom that makes one warm"

Right in front of me appeared a storm

And out of it dropped shovels and spades

"Go forth, dig yourself out and reform

Enough with your tired masquerade."

So said the Mattatron of all it surveyed

As I dug through the snow into the earth

What it meant to me was conveyed

That within us is all our death and rebirth

Immobilized by trepidation

like a prisoner on the rack

An imagined consternation

From another anxiety attack

Constant state of dissipation

From perceived things I lack

A complete liquidation

Making a weary insomniac

Like a slow and steady ablation

Like a stoic, reserved maniac

Standing but stumbling, mumbling and grumbling

Looking for meaning in the stars

Weeping but leaping, reaping while sleeping

Screening ghostwriters for my memoirs

I was wondering about the seed and the sprout

While watering my alkanet plants

Torn asunder by seething self-doubt

While observing a colony of ants

Then it came to me all at once like a lightening bolt

It's time to change, time to dissent, it's time to revolt

This morning I looked up at the sky

and it was abruptly rent in twain

So I casually watered my new bonsai

and cast away all my pointless frets

I sat back in my seat and lit a cigarette

I sang a hymn and hummed its refrain

I felt like a dangling marionette

And all at once, life was simplified