A Search for the Origin of Hate

In keeping things melodramatic, here's an old poem from some bygone days when some heavy life decisions were weighing on my soul...

What dragon steals the lives of men?

What vile monster delights in the scattered
     debris of a human heart

          and fills its vats of wine with the stinging tears of loss?

Is there something hidden,
laughing at the decision before me,

A confrontation of choice that has the possible
     inevitable

          conclusion of truth,

but can bury me under the shattered stones of misery?

Such granite crags of woe not unlike those

     that adorn his cold, cavernous walls,

sheltering in joyful sordidness the hellion serpent of pain.

He drags a scale-ridden toe,

bejeweled with an inky claw,

across my back,
     and the pain is a dead hunger
          and the poison sets deep
               and the scars are like nothing I've ever seen.

Does he think it futile when I smile at the sun,

when I force a laugh through tears that burn

     like the breath that bellows from his lungs?

Does this hideous hater of happiness hold a secret I can't yet see,

some knowledge of a timeline to my fortune

     with an ending he's anxiously awaiting?

How can something gain so much pleasure
     from so much lamentation,

          taking inner satisfaction at the wretched disposition of my heart?

It's the unknown answers that I fear,

some hidden potential conclusion to loathsome questions,

and the worry inside of my heart is like a feast
     to that obscure greedy demon
          lurking in the shadows.

What terrible creature can thrive in that way?

What am I looking for?

4.13.05