SNAP THE PLASTIC

Immersed, surrounded by plastic,

Told over and over

To snap out of it

As if it didn't exist,

Making me sick,

Striking me like a stick,

And cracking me like a whip.

The drugs work like umbrellas,

Blotting out the sunshine,

Blown inside out in the storm,

Blasted like the shrapnel

From a land mine.

And Hamlet's soliloquy

Ruins every escape plot.

There's always another excuse,

Apologies obligatory,

An email awaited,

A phone call coming,

A random possibility

From another dimension,

And the terror and the fear

Beyond all comprehension

Always there is the guilt -

Punishment for every time

I decided what's best for me,

Penalties for another's crime,

Friendships lost

On the monocline of decline.

There's so much space for more remorse

In a mind that stretches with every regret

And files failures in display stands

So that I can never ever forget;

While achievement is consigned

To an archive where I'm blind.

How laughable are my rhymes,

So crude my boring story lines,

Read by no one but me,

Understood by even fewer.

We all need a cliché today.

If you haven’t got one – or some –

Then get one – or some –

They’ll go a long way,

So they say.

Much better than being original

Or saying something visional.

And this came to me,

Although not in a vision,

Nor by way of the voices' sounds,

Just this, and no more,

On the shark-ridden shore

Of the nevermore -

There is no reason to live

When there are no grounds

On which you want to live.