John Tottenham

My Sadness is Deeper than YoursMy sadness is deeper than yours. My interior life is richer than yours. I am more interesting than you. I don__ care about anybody else__ problems. They are not as serious as mine. Nobody knows the weight I carry, the trouble I__e seen. There are worlds in my head that nobody has access to: fortunately for them, fortunately for me. I have seen things that you will never see, and I have feelings that you are incapable of feeling, that you would never allow yourself to feel, because you lack the capacity and the curiosity. Once you felt the hint of such a feeling, you would stamp it out. I am a martyr to futility and I don__ expect to be shut down by a pretender. Mothballs are an aphrodisiac to me, beauty depresses me. You could never hope to fathom the depth of my feelings, deeper than death. I look down upon you all from my lofty height of lowliness. The fullness of your satisfaction lacks the cadaverous purity of my pain. Don__ talk to me about failure. You don__ know the meaning of the word. When it comes to failure, you__e strictly an amateur. Bush league stuff. I__ ten times the failure you__l ever be. I have more to complain about than you, and regrets: more than a few, too many to mention. I am a fully-qualified failure, I have proven it over and over again. My credentials are impeccable, my resume flawless. I have worked hard to put myself in a position of unassailable wretchedness, and I demand to be respected for it. I expect to be rewarded for a struggle that produced nothing. I want the neglect, the lack of acknowledgment. And I want the bitterness that comes with it too.

IMPROVIDENCEThe other lives I might have ledAll now might as well beDead. Survived by no one.Barren, without issue of any sort:This withered bud, failedIn art and love. With no time leftTo change my course. But time enoughfor infinite remorse.

VIEW FROM A HILLI am not yet quite over it.I am lying down on top of it.Surveying behind me a wastelandOf dried-up promise.While the lights below twinkleWith dull mocking uncertainty.There isn't much left to look forward to,And the looking forward of the past has been belied.

SONG OF DAWNI saw the sun rise by accident.It was a horrible sight.Annoyed by its splendor, I sought refugein a moist pillow, and lay there, alone,at the dawn of another day,that brought me closer to another death,pondering the vanity of my solitude,the vanity of procrastination,and the tiresome inevitability of waking upagain the same person.It might still be possible to change,but obstinately I remain the same,hoping that others might take solacein my consistency.But perhaps they take no solace in it,perhaps they too find it tedious.