MORIBUND

MORIBUND

These days I’m not feeling well, like Satan on the coals of hell,
The fever’s high and getting higher, the prognosis it is getting dire,
The chills have come and the thrill is gone and I am feeling moribund.
All set to ride the long black train headlong into the driving rain or the burning sunset
Life is turning stark and dark and I am turning darker yet.

These years the days are gold they say, but there’s nothing good that can ever come,
Of dreams that fade to muted screams, of times that have turned moribund.
The coffin it is waiting and likewise groans the thirsty ground,
The crows they are circling, the deathly pavement they do pound.
The church is filling up with friends, the funeral home with flowers,
I have not been forgotten in these my final days and hours.
And perhaps I’ll leave a word or two to counsel or inspire,
Or a love poem in its sweetness, to stoke the waning fire.

But mostly all I have’s the past and its halls of harsh regret,
No one ever told me this was as good as it would get.
Stiff as a board, I cut the cord, of this empty barren shell,
And drown like Jack in his sloshing pail he carried to the wishing well.
The wishes and dreams have run amok and washed up on the nasty shore
Where tourists leave their trash and ash in a heap on the ocean floor.
A desperate ugly slush fund, that turns the whole earth moribund.
A withering witch, a dying slut, a wannabe male prostitute,
Who was never in the slightest handsome or barely even cute.

These days like some kamikaze sparrow I am falling,
To the epicenter of the earth, the voice of Satan calling.
A rare and lonely groundswell, that damns my soul to hell.
That takes a gun and kills the sun, that leaves me lost to everyone,
Drunk to the lees and on my knees, a man morose and moribund.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2011
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED