Perhaps

I look beyond my panning view,
that once made up my impressions and dreams.
A romantic with wide spectrum's the hue
Of what other dreamers with visions unseen.
Along with a million sad souls,
Who have lived side by side
With their Monsters and demons within:
In symbiotic coexistence,
There to live or die,
Drawing strength from one another's sins.

(O mitigate these unpalliated pains
That I might draw strength from you, God!)

And learn to live again?
That the scathing of Bakkus's sweet dram,
And the fragrance of nepenthe's,
No longer tempt my throbbing mind?

Ah, bitterness the shattered keel,
And fear the useless rudder;
I am an aimless ship adrift on a sea, carried along
On currents of emotion.

Whither I go? I do not know!
But all my strength is sapped from me,
Now flowing into the gutter.

(And, O how I wish for one bye gone day of devotion and faith!)

"But," I say, "perhaps safe harbor
Lies up ahead? A secure mooring;
A port of joy!"

Or perhaps," say I,
To me self in reply,
"A reef of crags lay hid in the dark,
And the sweet sound of the Siren's luring!?"

Aye, Seemed simpler in ages ago
When men rejoiced in their labors;
Not merely to feed on some grand repast,
Neither to fill up with idle pleasures.
For what hope is left to a selfish narcissistic world,
Where even the blessings of God go unheeded
As some oddity of the past?
For there are nobler men, and more devout than me,
Have I missed the mark of the fruition of my love, my labors,
Mistaking affluence for God's blessing?

Though not comfort can be drawn from such reflection,
Yet my critique of men holy or profane
Is seen through a poet's natural eye:
It's the helplessness of man's bane for which I weep.

Perhaps this prophet's soul;
This poet's heart is poisoned by self-loathing?
Perhaps I should stop, to sow love,
And then reap a harvest growing?

Aye, perhaps, perhaps!

Perhaps there is still some elusive hope
That I may snare and have peace anon:
Perhaps I find it?
Will I even know it,
This illusive apparition I seek to find?

(O to taste the sweet persimmons
That grow among the lilac and the palmettos;
To hear the lonely sound of the Hermit Thrush,
Carried along the breeze, through the trees,
The Oak and the Ash!
Or the babbling brook in the Spring
As the last vestiges of winter is cast off,
And warmed by the rays of the Sun.
And the Black-eyed Susan, sprouting with a
Rejoicing all her own to her creator,
There where she makes her bed
Among the lilies and the wild flowers,
In the meadow beneath the cerulean sky
By the whispering Wood)

But here I stand in my melancholy,
Wooed and swayed with my impatient demands.

And what shall I choose?
To die a poet with feigned immortality,
Or live a life of obscurity?