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We who wield the mighty sword
leaded and sharpened neat and straight
search vainly for hearty tales
where Eros or God has placed a hand
and turned the wilderness we have made
back into the garden with apple trees
and juicy synonym pairs and plums.

We yearn to taste the flesh sublime
to feel its secretions dripping
and with them ourselves slipping
into a whirlpool of sheer delight
from which we never rediscover
loneliness, despair, and pain.
Oh to be in that blissful state again
this side of the great divide!

So I put my pen and sword aside,
straighten my back and feign content
when in truth the World's goodness
is so well and truly spent
that it has bled me completely dry.
For every orphaned child I wish to cry,
or for widowed mother lowly bent
her home a shattered withered wreck,
I stay safely at home cocooned
my tears long since completely dried
desensitised by gory media information -
I count them one by one instead
as passing dark amorphous sheep
whose task is solely to prevent my sleep.


© Allen Ansell 2022