I'm on the Verge of Something Great

I’m on the verge of something great, I’m sure,

So please allow me to continue, sir.  I know

My work has been subpar with all I’ve wrecked

And stands me no good stead, but I detect

I’ll find a great thing to begin with, and

Once I’ve found it maybe I’ll demand

Better treatment here.  Now, if you knew what

It was I had in store, it’d help you, but

I don’t think you’d really understand.  See,

My mind sparked an idea that would be

A source of wonder - yes, I felt it once,

Yet all the worries here made me a dunce -

I’ve lost the thread; inspiration ceases

At the heart, and now I pick up pieces.

You see me here, bespectacled and mad,

Unhappy at the fortune that fate bade

Me have, my hygiene filthy and my dress

Quite stark.  I speak now from duress:

I met a girl once, thought she was the one

-Perhaps to her it was but all in fun-

I whispered complex nothings in her ear,

I sweetly kissed her, and I called her dear

One, and she giggled much; I saw too late

How much I meant to her and she to me,

I saw too late that fell disparity.

We courted for what seemed to me an age;

How strange to hear this said from such a sage

As I, when it was but a month.  Indeed,

My gravity did all my hopes erase,

And the love on which I’d learned to feed

Was gone completely from her glance.  Her face

Held nothing for me, naught was left of all

I’d seen before – my eyes’ work? – and a pall

Of death hung o’er her pallid neck, her face,

Those glimm’ring eyes and tawdry dress.  I care

Not where she lives or if she died;

My monument is still within that place

Where all that passed between us was.  What grace

Had I to bring her to me?  What fell power?

Indeed, what I showed her in that last hour –

What can I do now?  All is gone and lost.

My thoughts drift ever restless to that day;

Do you see clearly how much I would pay

To have that moment back?  Alas, I fear

I’d simply do as I had done before;

I’m no fast learner, and I have no peer

To teach what I would just forget once more.

I’ve lost my urges, feelings, and my will

To bring a better world to those poor ill.

She hurt me, and she cared not what came next

For me; ‘twas all for her.  And now my text

Is empty, pointless, dead, a grave of form,

Its wit is stale, it differs from the norm

Only in all its pointless rhetoric.

My teachers who had taught me how to sting,

Their retorts and forms, words that in me spring,

All lost within the clanging of a ring.

She dropped it with a coldness quite unfair;

It rolled ‘round loudly in the silent air

And came to rest on grounds once warmed by love.

She stood and walked away – confused I lay,

And wondered what I’d done I should’ve not.

My visionary thoughts are down the drain,

They’re gone for good.  Please leave me, spare my pain,

I’m on the verge of greatness… seems untrue,

But please… I say with everything I do

I’m getting closer to an answer here,

And when I find it there’ll be need to cheer.