This Tawdry Procession Poem by Seamus O' Brian

This tawdry procession of locust-eaten
leaves, stacking the witness box with
silent, ragged wounds of vacant nothingness,
ulcerated voids of lost potential, missing
fingers unpointing their accusations at me,
what might have been, should have been,
the corpse of this life riddled with the maggots
of my inabilities, my undone deeds, my un-planned
failures.

Dance, you zombied corpse!
Dance, you putrefied caricature of
life! For you are all that is left
of me. Jig your rotting limbs
in celebration of all the aspirations
manufactured through all these years of day-dreamed
almost potential, all the nodding expectations
of the would-be congratulators, now wagging
their heads at the sight of your chattering wounds,
the purulent seepage of your rancid hope,
draining away into that hardened soil,
sprouting nothing from the magic beans
for which I traded everything.
Yes, I stand accused;
what is my plea?
Guilty-~-of everything.