Bitterness,

I have come to know you well.

I drink you every morning

as my coffee,

which is such a soothing mix

of warmth and sweetness tinged

With acid.

It asks:

What is it like to kill,

What would it be like?

Would it assuage the pain,

the nagging discontent

I carry as an invalid on my back?

Whom to bestow it on?

No one special,

only the act,

lancing the pimple, so to speak,

and the spray of white goo

on the mirror would suffice,

like my mother demolishing

my teenage acne,

with her scent nearby.

Is that a recipe for relief,

for the bitterness

that lives in my gums,

 jaws clenched and ready?

You may see it in the lips

Downturned, sullen,

a picture of contained rage

as a memory passes,

a regret perhaps.

Yet I do not know why

I carry such poisons. I know

all things are born to suffer,

to decay and die.

Does a flower know bitterness?

I am not above a flower,

only another evanescent thing

I encounter in the mirror.

But the rancour is static,

metallic, situated at the

bottom, a constant irritant,

the bullet that does not fire,

that has no focus, no target.

I have no real enemies, nobody

I harbour hatred for. I rarely hate people,

only myself on an occasional basis.

And why? I find no answer, I rather

appreciate me. Origins? I know this: I felt

it as a child when I knew nothing

about the past. Perhaps I inhaled

a generic truth somewhere along the line

that there is no Justice. Anywhere for anything,

and so we are stuck (I am not the only one)

in a perpetual state of futility, a swamp of impotence

that grates and itches and cannot really be relieved.