One learns to live with a permanent state of disquietude. Each new laceration of the spirit accelerates the process of internal bleeding through which all notions of meaning, desire, ambition, understanding, acceptance, and dignity haemorrhage and empty into implacable oblivion.
One learns to accept this. To embrace it and raise a glass to the floating corpse that bears an eerie resemblance to the man in the mirror.

Banish all yearning!
Banish the thought of another, alternative fate.
It is available to so many others and I can see it, you protest. Ha, but do they have your deficiencies? Are they as insufficiently
human.

And should you ask me about that Optimism
whose details now escape me,
that can be visited only in memory
in passing
as a formal courtesy,
whose passionate clarity could see riotously colourful reprieves
from an eternity of desperation.
Should you ask me such damnfool questions,
I would spit on your face,
laugh at you,
mock you
and ask you to leave me alone.