I should be dead.
The best I can do at anything is no good.
I wake up eagerly every day and every day I’m me.
Useless, useless, useless.
I was better off just being alone,
Rather than being as I now am, consistently
lied to and hectored by needy, using people.
I don’t even know who I am now,
as if my very identity, that one shabby security,
has been nabbed from me in the night
and taken off for scrutiny somewhere
livid and immoral, where a dark river
laps nearby, and all work is deceit-infested.
I want to be dead,
Except I probably don’t. It’s just
I find that if people are trusted, they feed.
I’m worn-out with trying to comprehend
the mind that can be so using,
so cold and emotionally one-sided.
How can they get away with it?
I have loved, and I have trusted, and now
I want to be dead,
Except I probably don’t.
(David McLintock)