Take Three

Take Three

Take three poets,

Shikibu, Ghost and me;

our only similarity

is the way our minds stray

to the darker side

of depression,

obsession, despair.

If I am to believe what I read,

I’m the sole survivor,

which makes me wonder

if we put pen to paper

and create our own destiny

in the dankness,

the despondency of hopelessness.

I’d always considered

writing the feelings out

to be a form

of letting off steam,

of exorcising anguish,

coming to terms with the emptiness

and drowning...

drowning until the bottom is reached

and I can then push my way

laboriously back up towards the surface

Once there I’ll splash and splutter

and clear the fetid water

from my lungs,

the blackened cobwebs from my mind.

Maybe I’m wrong;

and that one day I too

will find myself wrapped up

in the seaweed of melancholy,

so thoroughly entangled

that it not o escape.