(A typical angsty, melodramatic poem, and also my answer to those who
appear to think that I'm a much better writer than I really am. All
poetry contains at least an element of truth, and this one certainly has
more than most.)



Self-Knowledge

My mind is a yawning emptiness
Barren of thought or dreams
A wasteland of parched truisms
Infertile ground for poetry to blossom
No flower finds sustenance in its dry soil
No sunlight shines in that gray nothingness
Bearing only the recycled truths of others
Fit fruit for such a desolate world
In which blue summer never comes
Filled with only howling ignorance
Screeching to make itself heard
No sweet melody resonates within
Only the tangled discord of dead clich�s
Weeping ghosts of once radiant visions
Worse than the soundlessness of gentle death
For all my imagination has bled away
A crimson flood of joy and vitality
All my reason for living has spilled
Into the wind, staining it with light
My mind is a shrieking vacuum
Deafening my ears with its madness
With monsters made of mundane horrors
Demons wrought in dust and spider webs
Ah-let my mind be filled even with lies
With flimsy, sparkling deceits
For I would rather be wrong
Than never to know at all
But my mind is a perfect night
Drained of all desire and despair
And there is nothing in it, but silence.

Penned by my hand on the 16th of Glacian, in the year 372 AF.