Vanity of Vanities

Once my days were long and wretched

And aimless, my brain

Drinking too deeply of the selfsame juice

And pleading for electricity

Before the penance of the void.

Even now my language flowers as though I could somehow impress you,

Somehow possess you with my sense and sensibility

And change Your heart with a turn of phrase.

And this is ultimate madness,

That I should be able to win Your favor

As though Your eye were for pleasing and not discerning.

Life born to grow and grown to weep

And reap the spoils of a slackness of flesh.

There could be no higher crime.

The world alone will not show

Goodness

Only a gesture towards emptiness.

A change in distributions.

Goodness is the negative principle.

It has no basis in material fact.

That is what makes it divine.

I have read that freedom is not liberty.

Roam to no rest here on this Earth.

Cruel it is to have to roam to find this is so.

And graceful to be spared this knowledge from the outset.

Sometimes I wish not for liberty but for plain conditions

Not imposed but desired.

Not free is the one who is shackled against their will

But free is the one who is begetter of their restraints.

There are no chains but which cast themselves and

Mine alone is the choice to don them

For they fit no other soul.