The Listener

How useless for me to understand.
For all my cries of “understand me”
what good will commiserating do?
I won’t change the way you feel.
You will still seek blankness
albeit knowing that I do too.
I wanted to knell with you
Express that I too, my dear clay one,
conclude us to be the balanced, authentic few
while those who don’t grasp it
are liars, dirty cowards.

You do know.
Have felt this!

But why does it hunt us so heavily –
others shrug it off
resuming their smiling lives –
Is it there, but unrecognized?
Too scared to acknowledge it
in all its renoun
In any form, it comes as
a welcome relief
the ecstatic release
A period to passion.
If only some merciful quietus
would find us and spare us
the difficulty
that captivates us in stasis.

(c) Tasha Chinnock 2007