Ab Imo Pectore (From the Bottom of My Heart)

I

With the candour of a child,
In the recesses of my mind,
Mem'ries compound, propound my life
To consciousness , to inner strife.

My tongue, it knows the taste of bile;
Catharsis cures the man purblind.
What's purgèd from his viscera
Is some kind of respite.

But if he's blithe to those contents,
Is not so keen to analyse
What satiates his appetite,
Indulge some more some hackneyed fruit

And put your body into throes
And aches and pains familiar
Before you plead the pain subsides,
Unless you are a masochist.

I knew one once; a sycophant
Whose idea of pleasure was
Quite perverse. He'd persuade naive
Girls to participate in lewd

Activities, though not against
Their to-be wistful wills. A tryst
Is a furtive affair. Lovers'
Motives are oft surreptitious.

I ascertain the human heart
To be so ensconced in matter,
Flesh and bone, not for protection,
But because it isn't heeded.

And not unlike Poe's tell tale heart,
It makes its presence known to he
Who harbours guilt, who harbours more.
Hark the scruples of your conscience.

Abjure thoughts of concupiscence
And listen to your moral muse.
Allay suffering indigence
And suffering in twos.

II

Having emerged from pubescence,
Adolescence into adulthood,
Having dealt with what was latent,
Quiescent: by quelling the qualms

Of my conscience, of my stomach
By conferring with a laden
Tongue the laments of decadence
To a sympathetic sweetheart

Who has absolved me of my sins;
Regression connotes remission,
Moral progression, in my instance,
I have resolved to live a life

Of keen ethical discernment,
Of moral rationality;
A kind of filial piety.
I heretofore concede to Him.

I sense a nascent rebellion
When I'm induced to contemplate
The motives for my wanton acts.
My motive now is to placate

The child in me who grew to hate
His absent father, to pacify
His ceaseless crying turned to spite.
Paternal plight was, too, the blight

Of my youth, and contemptible,
But it was too of seminal
Value. I've learned indelible
Lessons about the nature of

The common man and his psyche
By incurring the cathartic
Release of long repressed content.
I'm not happy, but complacent

With whom I have grown to become,
With the milieu I've adapted
To with a semblance of sin and
Independence. Happiness

Is a virtue I don't possess.
I've diagnosed my condition
As amabilis melancholia.
Ab imo pectore.