Irritating. Whiny.
Unpleasant fuckup. 
A mistake, a problem
come to stay.

One disease
after another, one system
creaking along
but just barely.

Waking up
every morning, dammit.
Not what was prayed for. 
Not what I’d hoped for. 

This is not the way I thought 
it would go. 
What some call
coming into grace

I call sliding into
a grave with no purchase
to be had from the sides
of the hole.

Can’t even hold on
as I go; I can’t 
close my hands and
can’t feel much anyway

as I’m numb from the prints
to the bone. To the bone:
it’s the bone I desire
to find in the mirror — 

but there’s too much flesh left
to cover it. I despair out loud: after all
I’m a whiny fuckup, I despair
of ever getting to see the bone,

ever getting to see myself
as more than incipient dead. It is as if
the universe itself is out to mock me
that in looking up from the grave, I see stars.