Endgame

by John Stocks

Your eyes as cool as moonstone
Or raging with restless fury.

You grieve as if you are bereaved
As if the gutting knife can show
A trick, some new and subtle twist
Elevating your personal pain
To poetic consciousness
Let’s call it art.

The art perhaps of the mundane
A chemical purgatory
And soulless undiscerning plague
An elemental ancient force.

A churning cocktail of self-doubt
And obligatory self-loathing.
There are months of self-deconstruction
Still to come, before you move on
A pain transcending race or class
A democracy of rejection.