Here is a broken, pointless pencil:
Graphite and splinters and severed potential.
Can't sketch a face or shade in a stencil;
Inert yellow stick from a former writing utensil.
My brain's up on blocks like a car with no wheels,
It only knows what it knows when it feels what it feels.
I keep burning the gas and keep feeding the meals,
But the only thing moving is the rust climbing steel.
I miss cigarettes for their burning expression
Of distaste for this life's cyclic progression:
Down and then up and then sideways back into depression.
I once spilled my disdain in sparked tobacco confession.
Determination, courage, faith, destiny:
These must become something more than just words to me--
Concepts that I cling to out of desperate necessity
To keep me alive until I recover the rest of me.
