Fevered Mind

A poem by Sydney Stone. I do not own the image.

***

Useless, is what you are,

So you have been told,

You’ll never get far,

You’ll never grow old.

Once, you thought that you felt love,

When you frolicked as a lad,

She was to you a dew-kissed dove,

But then she moved on, to rut with a stag.

Once you thought you had found a career,

But then you choked,

Success-born fear,

You were crushed, your depression stoked.

And so you curried inebriation,

Drugs and drink,

Emotional hibernation,

Nights bent over the kitchen sink.

You are useless, you always were,

So they had said,

So they would infer,

That you had made your own bed.

So casually dismissed, had been your dreams,

Never, they’d say, earned,

And thus, forever unseen,

You just couldn’t shake, the brand once burnt.

Forever useless, that’s what you now are,

You never grew old,

You never got far,

So you believed, so you had been told.