I Am a Mausoleum

Oh, would that I had been someone else
And done different things.

There is no home erected of my bones,
No rough shelter’s raw-raftered roof 
Arcing aimlessly within my sinews;
There is no place within me
That houses anyone but the repentent dead.
Oh, dammit, could that I had been someone else!
That I had dressed this corpse in a flush of flowers!
That I had grasped the tiller with some hope,
Some providential modicum of foreknowledge,
Because the real price of wisdom is heartache,
A wealth of tears, and its only reward
Is a frightening, ineffable deadness.

Oh, would that I had said what needed saying
And kept the rest to myself.

There is no rightful preacher in my pulpit,
No real amiable honesty in my pews.
It’s my very basest elements that beg,
But, oh, dammit, it’s my lips that move!
I smell the charnel in my lungs,
That I had spoken these words to anyone!

Damn the pernicious possibilites put into
The pitiful ploy of endless permutation!

Oh, would that I had taken a noble trade,
And set upon the world a pittance of use;
A carpenter, a roofer, a welder, or a
Farmer who wed the land and loved it always.
Oh, would that I had remembered to smile!
To roughen my hands at the spinning lathe!
To write in ink instead of translated binary!

Oh, would that I had been someone else,
And done different things.