A Dirge Poem by dukesekhon sekhon

Aah woe is me!
O thou cruel, clinging Inactivity!
Who habitually wraps itself around the prostrate
Form of its opiate victim, wringing out in small degrees
The life out of life: As some dove frail
Panting lies enfeebled within the dreadful
Fold of an ever menacing, insidious reptile: inert,
Yet omnipotent, and insatiably prey-full -
Thou dost hold me so in sway, O thou
Self-wrought misery! O woe is me. And behold!
The more the self-wronged victim struggles
To free, the more draws tighter the vicious hold:
Then weakened soon, effort being wasteful of itself,
Seeks an early doom; and yet lives on even
As a lump, to feed in solicited rest
The cankerous worm of idleness, that into its tendon
Every, nerve and morsel of flesh eats, till
Bores through the very soul to pollute
Itself the pulsating life-stream with its inert gore,
And all is as: a lulling darkness amidst stormy noon;
A wakeful hibernation amongst living strife;
A maudlin eye pierced through by a flash of light -
Unblinking, unseeing; living, yet living in disguise.