"Feeling Sorry for Myself"

This poem made me smile this morning!  Seemed to put things in perspective a little bit....nothing is that bad right?  

....I shake and shiver.....grinning!  

Hope you have a good Wednesday!  

Feeling Sorry for Myself 

I start with a groan, swelling to a moan, 
rising to a keen, ascending 
to a shriek that tapers off in a thin wail. 
I hug myself and, whimpering, 
rock back and forth on my heels. 
No one has ever known such sadness. 
No one can grasp how I feel. 

I smash an egg over each eye. 
I smear my face with coal and pepper. 
I wear a paper bag soaked through 
with spoiled watermelon and pork grease. 
I shred my happy past - my books, 
pictures, and poems, published or not. 
I'll never fly fish again. 

I'll never make love again. 
I'll never sit outside and watch night 
stretch its starry tent over the sky. 
There will be no more metaphors. 
I am more sorrowful than a sorrowing man. 
Life has no more meaning to me 
than a life without meaning. 

My heart slows. My blood congeals 
to brown, vein-clogging mush. 
My stomach goes on strike; my colon 
bars its door. People assume 
I'm terminal. They imagine what 
would make them feel the way I look, 
and project their paltry problems onto me. 

As if they could fathom my misery 
by waterwinging over its abyss! 
My pain is too heavy to lift, 
too vast to measure, too ineffable to name, 
and incalculably too precious to share. 
I dig my grave in a landfill, and topple in. 
I rub dirt and dog droppings in my hair. 

I've sunk so low its funny; so I start to giggle. 
Then to chortle. Then to roar. Mothers 
clutch their bleating kids, and rush away. 
Gangbangers dash to the far side of the street. 
I crawl out of my grave, strip, and shower 
with a gunk-filled water hose. 
I shake and shiver, grinning, in the filthy air. 

~ Charles Harper Webb ~