Edmund Pickett

                    1

“I’m miserable,” comes the cry,

and at it muscles twitch around the eye,

organs cramp and Dreadful lands on ‘I’—

the time of sick-crawlies with no why.

Slumped in a pool of self-pity, all sights,

all thoughts urge on the stalled shudder that fights

to rattle my bones apart but can’t come.

I’d give up much, much more than this poem

never to have met such delirium.

                    3

Part 2 would have been worse, surely you see;

the downward spiral narrows quickly.

No longer symbols, the shudder and the pool

had come to claim depression’s talky fool.

Scared shitless, I left Anniversary

(curled up beside me, yawning sleepily)

and stumbled to the desk to see if I

could capture in words, the wrench inside, the cry.

          And while I struggled with the first, the wait

          made the worst  recede, and then evaporate.

© 2009 Edmund Pickett

                 (This poem may be copied or forwarded as long as

                  you retain the copyright notice and author’s name)