Ida Toilwueri

I leafed for my last time through the yellowed envelopes
Adorned by postage stamp visages of dead statesmen.
Familiar faces that now mock me, impudent rebukes
To my once so vivid dreams of immortality.

Seeds of ideas would drift onto the soil of my mind,
Putting down roots into my fertile imagination.
Transplanted into words though, they'd wilt and die.
Images that bloomed in my soul droop lifeless on the page.

My pile of rejection slips grew larger than I'd ever dreamed
My reputation would.  This trunkful of manuscripts remains;
Brittle pressed flowers of visons that seemed to me beautiful,
That I'd nurtured and pruned in my mind until I plucked them.

A bouquet once picked, quickly dies.  Petals fall from stems
And are caught by the wind, fluttering onto the frozen ground,
Or an icy editor's desk.  From there they'll be swept aside,
Often unread, into neat little piles of leaves to be burned.

The grey walls of my mundane existance slowly pressed in
Upon me like the remorseless grip of a tightening vise.
All I'd gleaned from my existance was grey hair, aching bones;
The potter's field beckoning me like a hooded spectre.

The Horatio Alger creed that avers that failure
Can be overcome by dogged persistance is a lie.
Each rejection slip confirmed my worthlessness;
Another manuscript of mine had crawled home to die.

A soul bereft of pride is as ready to be toppled
As a statue of the leader whose regime's been overthrown,
As the fragile house of cards when its base is lightly nudged,
As a castle of sand at the onslaught of high tide.

Each slip hissed its message of failure, as age and despair
Hovered about me like winged demons extending their claws;
Sent by the Prince of Darkness to pull me into his pit,
I'd become ripe fruit for his minions to harvest.

This frail old woman had to finally let go of her dreams.
They've fled the grasp of my arthritic fingers, as do needles now
That I used to thread with such ease.  I guess an old clothesline
Will suffice now to finish the novel that nature had begun.

That bulky trunk, with its Flying Dutchman cargo of ghost
Of penned passion that has blotted stillborn onto paper,
Squats like Satan's black dog at the foot of my bed,
A mute reminder of the failure that has hounded my life.

That trunk could perform a service for me now, though.
I pulled it over to a spot beneath a rafter,
Stepped atop it, slipped a noose around my neck
And leaped
                  To meet whom I hope will be a merciful God.