THE SHELL

This was the first serious poem I had ever written. It was on a night of deep depression and self-pity, and I needed some way to filter out these horrible feelings. I then thought, "Isn't there that poetry assignment due tomorrow in Language Arts?"

 

Is God watching as I relinquish my spirit pour my blood into the slits of the keyboard? Dragging behind me my Soul in chains?   Watching in anguish as the lonely dark eats away at who I once was?   Could have been? Does He solemnly witness my weary masquerade? I have been eternally committed to bear this sorrowful mask... Those small felicitous moments retain so little solace I have slumbered through these years in an agonizing waking dream My essential nature incarcerated by the self-supposed shameless What have they that have not I?  Love, lust, greed, hate?  Have not we all? Damn them all! I proclaim. But it is to naught that I scream out these injustices Because they are the blessed ones; and I watch in disgust as they wallow in their own self-importance I cry out from among a thousand faces Each one weeping with naked lament I gaze with empty sockets at the faces around White and empty; devoid of spirit or emotion For life and feeling has been stolen from them And as I watch I begin to quake with a childlike fear And I begin to realize The faces are all mine.

 

Author's Note

Of any poems I write, this is the only one I would ask you to go easy on. Constructive criticism on this poem is obviously welcome, but for the most part, I realize its flaws.