writer's block

my muse leaves me
with writer's block
this mind refuses to obey
the wretched demands
of productivity, loneliness
doesn't make anything better
though I had imagined it would
flat, numb uniformity
becomes a chore

i abandon rhyme
and reason,
without rhyme
or reason
such prosaic prose
worse the verse,
lame attempt
beneath contempt
my inner critic revels
in disgust his bowels
excrete the vowels
a-e-i-o-u
faux chateau
fell pell-mell
into a well of eau
the hearse of terse
spurs the curse
of a knotty universe
in taut
free-association
and madness
occurs.

the wretched noble

Noble to ignoble
in such a trifle
when the muse
does one refuse
and then stifle
one becomes

When passion's flames
flicker low
the seeds of decay
doomed to spay
does one sow
in one's soul

Dig a deep hole
in the yielding earth
down to molten rock
and do not balk
at the blazing hearth
keep at it

The blasted pit
will soon give way
to the cool center
and here in enter
as the light of day
seeps below

Stem the flow
hold at bay
life's forces
from ebbing away
in wayward courses
and plug the cracks

lest Death attacks
the silent foe
breaches the fort
with sickle and hoe
reaps at the throat
and casts red pallor

stupor

Leaden-eyed stupor envelops
A feeling of antiquity develops
when I awake in the late night
and rummage for the torchlight

leaving the warm covers behind
and the warm body that held you
in the darkness the urge to find
light does succeed, but fails to do

any good to your sudden despair
at catching a glimpse of your face
reflected in the mirror, and you gaze
at signs of wear and streaks of tear

for in your sleep, you have been crying
and your waking life, you have been lying
to yourself, prostrate while life
tramples on you, in misery and strife

that one look haunts you in that moment
between two worlds, but you still fail to see
what it revealed, what it meant
what has been, what could be

a vague dread engulfs and alarms
but there's no one listening inside
to pay heed or hide, seek or guide
nothing alive that warms

flesh and spirit

The good voice whispers thus
"Don't be such an impudent fuss"
The evil voice croaks this
"Think of all the fun you'll miss"

What should I listen to, my Lord?
Who do I turn to in times of woe, God?
To offer me advice on matters such
When to win and to lose is so much

What do you think of my impasse?
What do I keep and what do I pass?
Is it self-righteousness that I must disavow?
Or will my morality bear a mortal blow?

If I agree to beware, deny and avoid
will my life be of pleasure devoid?
Or if I let my body and senses be toyed
could I forever sustain all that pleasure unalloyed?

For all time to come, shall I be damned in hell
or would I have lived my life on earth well?
Is my body a worthless, empty shell
to be discarded at the sound of death's knell

by the spirit that floats to the gates of Heaven
Or is it something to cherish till I'm a hundred and eleven
be tended to right from sapling to withering stump
from a child's babbling to an old man's slump

and all the while, keep it supple and strong
to bear burdens and race with the throng
devour the fruits of the flesh and procreate
and leave the rest to will and fate?

trapped

Trapped in a fantasy
with nowhere to turn
haunted by apostasy
and doomed to burn

in a flame, swept by a swell
of longing and despair
leave behind an empty shell
a sordid, ghostly sight to bear

Its hard to conceive
that a man could believe
with such strange, fearful conviction
caught in spells of his own deception

that were spun under the bright morning sun
in solitary flights at glorious heights
to live more intensely and to die more immensely
than the others around him, with their lives so dim

The road to dusk is long and rough
and youth is still near enough
to behold and embrace life
with all its joys and strife

so make good of what remains
in truth, wit and wisdom
go love and be loved, free from feigns,
fear, madness and boredom

to act at will and with deep faith
in the meaning of your imprint
of what remains, let it become no wraith
your body of work survive in print.

crazy

Crimson light on the wallpaper
shines on the flowers and bees
I watch the narrow railroad taper
where the train meets the trees

look out the window, the rain
shines the pavement below
hear the whistle's refrain
and watch the smoke billow

I cringe with a sudden twinge
of pain inside, another spasm
of unfathomable loneliness,
inhuman, tormented sadness
splits open a gaping chasm
to begin yet another binge

of suffering and anguish
sparked by this vision
condemned to be visited upon
myself, a thousand times and one
remarkable in its precision
and unable to distinguish

from the spectres that appear
to me, in those haunted dreams
so strikingly now and here
every figure so vividly seems

to shimmer in dreadful reality
leaden, numbing, mourning
creeping towards insanity
by the very next morning

an end to all morbidity
a happy delirium
all that woeful rigidity
and all that hopeless tedium

gone, over, finished
a renewal however crazy
free, torpor is banished
it feels light, airy, breezy
all confusion has vanished,
all's clear now, all that was hazy.

trip

why does it seem now
that I've learnt how
this warm and fragile
this world's been all this while

how I came to be
like billions of other
bundles of flesh
from within Mother

how I strove to be free
of all that tissue
that binds me
to the issue

of all those assembled
in vain
for I stumbled
upon the opiate of pain

in youth and it's sensations
full to the brim
the false lacerations
of imagined sin

the sweet numbness of melancholy
the gray fatalism of wasting away
those symptoms of romantic folly
that holds unalloyed sway

I swallowed all too readily
in my rush to heroic surrender
to mortality in spite, headily
to tear my self asunder