I Mind Images, etc.

Not long ago, I was reading the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe (a famous graduate of West Point who, they say, died of rabies in 1849). And as I perused this man's most curious and singular work, endeavoring to shrug off the growing chill of Fear that thus subsumed me, I mused silently to myself: "This guy's crap. And a whiner. All he does is just list his complaints and try to make them rhyme. I could do totally better."

And so...

I MIND IMAGES IN MY MIND'S EYE

THIS is a gloomy place,
A dark place--but roomy, true--
A dark and rheumy place.
I am in its very bottom
And do not hope to see the sunshine.
Ne'er again, no, no, no, no,
Not ever in my life forever
Shall I see again those days
I took for granted so. Say I:
If I run a hundred miles that way,
A thousand miles this,
If I dig a million down,
It'll all still be nil,
Nothing--abyss.
Abyss. Similar. Same. Abyss.
O, O, O, O, North and South and East and West--
Stop sign, I. No way, egress nyet,
All ways the same way.
And I, come what may, will never
Change, can never age.
I am like a big-headed child
Mourning mangled Teddy
(on the chilly Transvaal).
I am, I am, like
A Deity without a Creature.
I am--already--feelin' giddy.
But there is no place
to fall to
to fall down no
no different from up
O!

- N.