Withering

When my poetry stagnates, I know the world is on fire. I know the world is on fire, for my poetry does not sing. It is not born out of misery, my words, But squeezed instead out of the last remaining willfull happiness I have left within me. This happiness that writhes in pain, Asking to be let free. In my misery I drink of the world. I embody the cowardice my forefathers taught me to seek. I am flesh and I am bone and the misery of this earth Does not entail me. And neither does my poetry. Dried up sands within fall like an inch of time pasing by from a higher cliff And atop it I sit, wondering When shall the end be near me.