Dis-satisfied...

There is a god of the underworld names Dis. I always liked the name - so elemental. Yin and yang, fire and water, Dis and Dat. Dis aint wot ah wannid ta tawk abow.

There once was a fellow near thirty
Whose rhymes were consistently dirty.
But he bore no blame -
He'd simply exclaim,
"I jus think them girlies is purty."

A princeling there was with a vassal
Who found her Protector a hassal.
Whenever the serf
Knealt down on the turf
She felt prince's prick in her assal.


Is my maturity a putridity? Is there anything worse than competence? Did I lose something essential along with my careless self-destruction? I felt I was missing youth when I was a kid, and growing up has done nothing to help that situation. I can say at least that I have gone from thinking I was 50 when I was 17 to thinking I am 23 at the age of 29. But I will never be young enough to be young. I never have been.

I was too old when I had young love. My age, not my youth, made me covetous and frightened. I had the dream of love but saw that it was a dream and felt the tragedy of its illusion even as I lived it.

But I'm getting off track in this mush. I wanted to reflect somehow on the fact that I have not let go of the idea of the writer as rebel or the suspicion that there is genius in suffering or suffering in genius. I am a careful husband and father, but there is in me a reckless soul. The former is the master of the latter, and I trust it will always be so. Can that soul not then truly serve that careful man? This destroyer god that is in me, can I let it beat prose from my brain without myself feeling the concussion?