If only some conviction could ignite my core,
Some goal or trial I could grasp or could maintain.
A quest or burning question making me explore
And seek some oracle's illumining domain.
Would action seize me, restless, bored, and unenthused;
How passionless my torpid day-to-day untwines.
My petty wants and needs encircle to accuse
My enervated soul of perilous decline.
Ambition holds so little power over me,
Could oracles with all their secrets even find
The cosmic station where my swaying soul can be?
No search for truth invigorates my tired mind,
All mysteries as real as they are false can seem,
But disabused of falsehood still I'm wandering
The flattened plain of motivationless ennui;
Despite experience or knowledge squandering
That precious resource time: inert, unoccupied,
A paralytic mind concerned but locked aside.
A place for my poems 