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FINAL POEM

By Andrew Darling



You contemplate the final poem

somewhere in late night/

early morning. Beauty has drained

 

from the divine

and the everyday has become

a medieval rack

 

of terrifying sensitivity and acute

loss of hope.

The world, its dystopic inhabitants

 

and all their distorted

machinations have eaten through

your trust. Everything

 

reminds you of a future that is

dire culmination

of the past. Broken struggle,

 

friends you sadly love.

Family. Child and wife. Duty scattered

through piecemeal life.

 

The nothingness and deliverance

that sings and calls.

Existence reduced to two alternatives

 

and one choice.

The pain crawled inside years ago.

It found residence


in every corner of you. It permeates

each action

and lines the garments of every role

 

that plays you.

The pressure to be grateful, to be

happy, has brought your grief

 

to boil, has stewed you from inside.

Your anguish burdens

everyone you love; you offer only

 

weakness to the world,

to your angelic daughter who

you so want to be whole.

 

Desperate decision time as seconds

roll like oceans

in the deep nadir of night, peering over

 

the subcontinental shelf

of your life. You weigh things up, driven

by darkest winds of woe.

And you go.


© Copyright Dark Poets Club

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