Not long ago, I was reading the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe (a famous graduate of West Point who, they say, died of rabies in 1849). And as I perused this man’s most curious and singular work, endeavoring to shrug off the growing chill of Fear that thus subsumed me, I mused silently to myself: “This guy’s crap. And a whiner. All he does is just list his complaints and try to make them rhyme. I could do totally better.”

And so…

THIS is a gloomy place,
A dark place–but roomy, true–
A dark and rheumy place.
I am in its very bottom
And do not hope to see the sunshine.
Ne’er again, no, no, no, no,
Not ever in my life forever
Shall I see again those days
I took for granted so. Say I:
If I run a hundred miles that way,
A thousand miles this,
If I dig a million down,
It’ll all still be nil,
Nothing–abyss.
Abyss. Similar. Same. Abyss.
O, O, O, O, North and South and East and West–
Stop sign, I. No way, egress nyet,
All ways the same way.
And I, come what may, will never
Change, can never age.
I am like a big-headed child
Mourning mangled Teddy
(on the chilly Transvaal).
I am, I am, like
A Deity without a Creature.
I am–already–feelin’ giddy.
But there is no place
to fall to
to fall down no
no different from up
O!