The words are: face up to the `challenge’: A poem

How do I name myself in an iota –

a slip of a word that grows as tall

as a tree, over me? How do I

define myself, and not find any

meaning in the chasm I am compelled to

descend into, like Jack’s abysmal beanstalk?

You’d think I was nameless, like a

country road identified by a number,

a mere item in the concourse; that I feel

the rancour of nonentity. Do I define

myself by my love, that is an unscaleable

wall. That if I should cry, comes back at me

from the wall with the word –  `stoicism’,

So, I laugh, and the word is `lampoon’,

hysterically, that it be my only mock-freedom

If I should break with frustration at this au contraire –

And the word is `perseverance’. So I take the

empty country road, without affiliation, without aspiration,

And the words are `ungratification’ `loneliness”

then, `believe’. I am marked by a gainless sinecure.

My preoccupation is a demise of purpose.

And the word is `persistence’. I am feeling

discouraged in the interminability of suffering. I want

to cry with my pain, decry the obliquity of evil, and

censure it to oblivion. And the word is `sacrifice’.

I say I am perturbed by the mendacity caused by evil, and

its treachery, chicanery and deceit. And the words are

`astuteneness’ `discernment’. I am worn out by the livery of

the lexicon, I want definitiveness. I want to unshackle the

unrequited` love’ and `truth’ and `justice’ that I have

upheld for eternity through suffering without recompense

 and manifest, and the words are `challenge of the continuum’ !

This Love and this Truth and this Justice, and` this eternal conundrum!’

I think of them in  bewilderment. And the words are `believe’ `faith’ `hope’!