There are times

There are times

When thinking is a pastime

They are less frequent

As the world gets older

There is a drudge about life

Even in the countryside

Where the mind has more freedom

To wander

Discovering rural idylls

Uncovering blissful language

Hidden beneath mounds

Of verbal garbage

Frolicking in a meadow of rustic charm

Wondering what to do with

A word such as bucolic

Bukowski would have spat it out

He was a bitter pill

Why waste a metaphor

On the man next door

Who wants to be a writer

When there is never enough

Cynicism to dispel a belief

That deep down

The hatred we feel is self-directed

Pour me a drink boys

A Macallan sherry oak

Will do me fine

How easy to rhyme with wine

What good would it do

When there are more pills

To swallow

Bitterness sullies the intensity

Of a life lived,

Waiting for the penny to drop

Before the truth dawns

Is less a pastime

More an escape

From critical thinking,

Pull out the discontent

Lean on the grudge

Adorn your prose with acrimony

It will not change the mood

But desolation

Should not be

The only agony

Of grieving, a life less lived

When acerbity can be a clever disguise

For the mundanity

Of resentment.