The Chimera Poem by Edmund Judge

Patient: Doctor, please! I need a cure,
You cannot let this curse endure.
For six months now I’ve had no peace,
Is death alone my sweet release?

Doctor: Relax yourself and take a breath,
Why must youths escape to death?
For just before it cuts your fate,
You’ll come to love this world you hate.

So part with death and speak with ease,
Of how you met with this disease,
Who were you with, where were you then?
How can I cure without the ken?

Patient: Well, tragedies all start the same:
It’s simple bliss which sparks the flame.
And when this flies what does the heart?
With vicious zeal lets life depart.

So every night ensconced in bed,
A Heaven was hid within my head.
And here I fled, but what lay there?
A form so graceful, fine and fair.

Then all my days were rushed to night,
To sooner meet my splendid sight.
This was my life, this blessed swoon,
My single thought: She’d be mine soon.

But time marched on and then I saw,
That ‘soon’ had died some months before.
Yet still She stayed so far away:
Delight lost hold and grief took sway.

Doctor: Ah, Hope’s the fiend which stole your sight,
And haunts a man but frees a mite.
But then it leaves and lets you see,
The void of life with clarity.

Patient: The truth is dealt so now I know,
What spider weaved my web of woe,
But what gain I to know the spring,
When still the grief has life to sting?

Doctor: What I prescribe is lots of booze,
To numbness drink, what can you lose?
For when your wounds just will not heal,
Make damn well sure you cannot feel.