I howled out in pain,
Some time ago now,
Like some poor feral beast
Cruelly caught in a trap,
And several times since,
I howled out in pain
At the thought of the waste
Of the life that might once have been mine,
Of the appalling mess
I made of my most precious days,
And all the hurt I inflicted
On souls who once believed in me,
For all throughout the years,
I threw both fortune and love away,
Not once but repeatedly,
Time and time again,
I destroyed the very best
That life can gift a person with,
And with such an obscene facility,
I stand on the precipice
Of the final pathetic phase
Of a catastrophic existence,
Quite saturated with heartache,
And half insane with regret,
Yet, I never even sought the compensatory gifts
Of peace and domesticity,
The little ones that might have been,
They were all spirited away from me
By a monster in thrall
To some perverse pathology,
And yes, that monster was me,
I am the legacy of his aberrancy,
Still I strive on a diurnal basis
To make the best of the little that remains to me,
And if I can serve as a kind of warning,
I might yet know a measure of peace…