With Apologies to Prufrock

My first attempt at anything remotely resembling stream of consciousness writing.

Despite this pall that hangs around my head,
I persevere, around the empty bed,
The mind, it burns – alone and disregarded,
Yet rhyme and reason seek,
To override emotion,
And create despite devotion.

For I’m no Plath! To gnash my teeth and wail,
And gas myself till mind and organs fail,
No skull to grasp, and muse on want to be,
I cling to live as it must cling to me.

I should have been a pair of covetous eyes,
Drifting bloodshot through the shrouded streets.

Though I have grinned and starved, wept and woke.
To desires hollow, stifled under skies,
My depth as shallow as an open vein,
The moment of my greatness is to wane.

Perhaps I ran out of time,
Or lust was a poor and zealous master,
I’ve left effigies of you in the depths of my person,
That frights the mind to flights,
And beckon to disaster.

I should have been a pair of grasping hands,
Laid silent in the depths of hallowed earth.

Have I the strength, when all is said and done,
To force the moment at the need of one?
Is it fair? Is it fair?
I am adrift, the soul of moral despair,
My mind the barrel of a smoking gun.

I have witnessed men clip back the wings of birds,
Whose only crime was song too soon to heed,
How long before my own wings are as shorn?
For thinkers are a rare, peculiar breed.

I should have been a soft and stifled mind,
Content until the moment of my death.