You Are Rich

Festered lament maddens me Why must the despair of my heart’s desire Truly enlighten me? I rested among the sick and lame And found myself no different from the rest For a troubled mind holds endless poverty Penniless regret marks as a sickness no doctor can prescribe For the bottles of balm are empty And medicinal hope grows angry I derived my madness from creativity Revealing the remains of my humanity ‘Cool off, child’, I heard a soft voice whisper But can’t you see I live off the flame? It asks for no nickel or dime! But it seeks to destroy all the same The small voice returns at times And often my heart listens But we all listen And only believe in the inevitability of pain I speak of the majority Not of you For you are blessed and beyond disgrace You have a life—a beautiful face And most of all, you are rich With attributes I can only dream of You are rich with life and purpose Holding inscrutabilities I can only wish to understand You lift me without touch or care Disposing me from your treasures Because though you meant no harm, You are rich with blessing And must remove all possible threats So my festered lament Remains an enlightenment I can say I am rich in poverty But you are forever rich In Mystery What hurts the most is knowing I may be wrong about you For you are so obscure in this mind And as empty as I am I wish to be filled In your richness But we all are filled to the brim in the end And sometimes I cannot distinguish the good from the bad There is nothing I wish to discard So I hoard in constant deficiency and despair And I hoard the idea that you are beyond compare That you are rich And always will be richer Than me—or he