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.