It’s hard to be a dreamer
in our cruel, seductive world,
where TV screens, and magazines
flaunt the enchanting charm,
the affluent thrills,
the ethereal poise,
of faraway, elusive things
that are always a little
too far
from



reach.

For a romantic’s pain
is unmatched in its anguish,
as the world
drips paltry, saccharine drops
full of false promises
sweet as arsenic
onto the yearning tongues
of the young and the feverish.

Consequently,
the real hell, the ceaseless perdition,
is not a scourge after our demise.
Instead, it is the sigh of each hour
that the spirit is left unsated
and it is the torturous burning
felt in every dreamer's soul
when an aspiration
is left manqué and quiescent.