Darkness fell like my love's feet
Softly o'er the fields of wheat,
O'er the valley, o'er the bridge,
O'er the mountain, o'er the ridge.

And sitting still o'er a blazing fire,
And my heart blazing with desire,
Dark is the fire, I still confide,
Compared to the eyes of my would-be bride

And blazing like my heart, my mind,
For that your kindred could not find
That I had will where had not kind,
So to our love were deaf and blind.

And rove I will to seek my worth
And rove I'll o'er this whole earth
And though beside you I mayn't lie
We'll share an earth and share a sky.

Perhaps, one day, Fate will prove fair
And let me pledge to you my care.
For now, our love benighted be -
Hope, soon, we shall a sunrise see.

It is literally only the cold now that bothers me:
I can hug my knees, feel warmth of the bowl of curry
That I warmed up for me and my girls. You fall in love
And I fall behind, I fall back. Move on and move
In and marry, sweet and twenty as you are, sweet and loving
As you are, who don't listen to Infinity on High shoving
The irony into the backseat, gazing at the lyrics' memories
Like a postcard collection on a corkboard. Ryan Ross could have cursed at me,
And I could have cursed like Kellin Quinn, but these are dead times now
To beat down with a combat boot in moving, as I row
With my personal indifference to the candles and the wedding bouquets,
To the political matches passing me by, the parties of croquet
That I decline to program, combat boots ever on the road,
On the road to being Her, a still concept without a goad
Towards what the fairytales say I should be - I'm a pop punk song:
I take no prisoners: Your definition's wrong.

One life, darling, in this form, at least
One day the sun won’t rise any more in the east
For you, at any rate. Will you be able to say
On that final day, when Fate takes your breath away
You lived it to the fullest?
Made it beautiful even in the second that seemed the dullest?
Here is my advice – do something mad once in a while,
Something that the thought of makes you smile
Not just with delight, but with amusement, too
At its absurdity in it being something you wouldn’t ordinarily do
Take a chance – Take a run, make a dance,
Don’t be shy, and write to that acquaintance,
Compliment a stranger, take photos of ducks,
Order the wackiest ice cream, smile on those times when you’re down on your luck
Because you were brave, and because you dared
To live your life in the truest way that you cared.

Cast me gently, let me sink.
Put me into the person of a smooth grey pebble
Carry me to the shallows, and gently drop me in
That I may fall, disappear, and forget for a bit, the whining treble,
The troubling bass, the choir of cacophonies, a migraine
Appearing around my temples and at my back;
That I may forget, I lack, I lack, I lack, alack.
May the waters churn and lap upon the surface,
I lie, I curl, I sleep, I exist, quiet, in topaz;
My simplicity is a privilege: I don’t need to imagine I’m a gem,
Even if I am. Water covers me, and you aren’t to call them,
Pick me up and dry me until the sea turns garnet the second time.
Let me drown in peace, out trouble; let me remember I’m
Better than waves of doubt would have me think.

Messy ink, ragged paper, dust
I laid them down to gather dust
And came back to them only now
Sorting, sitting, wondering how
A few weeks ago these worksheets
Were my world, these were feats
Of daily effort to a common goal
Now, never to be touched by all of us at all.
And saying “To think...” to my sister, who didn’t hear,
And likely never will, I all but let go of a single tear.

I am a girl, since in my soul I know no better, of curious notions:
I take storms in teacups
I collect them, and channel them into whirlpools
When my soul can no longer take the ups
And downs, when I no longer possess the tools
To build a façade, or can no longer hold them
I accumulate the dust from molehills
And make them into volcanoes, from which stem
And flow the plumes of fumes and spills
Of my lava anger.
And if my spirit intellect were stronger,
I would not bottle my emotions.

What manner of a man is he,
Forgetting all the pain that he
Once caused a lady, thinks he's free
To ask, in no small words, "Love me"?

What manner of a lady, she,
Misreading a man's friendly plea
Asking comfort and company,
Compassion, is laughing freely?

No one's right, and no one's wrong,
She's a coquette, and he's not strong,
He's no fool, and she's no fox,
You can't fit either in a box.

What manner of a person, they
Who beat about the bush all day,
Who beat about the bush, that they,
Lose sight of all the truth?

What manner of a life is this?
She's merely waiting for a kiss,
He's waiting for Nirvana's bliss:
Arrested by hurt, pride, and youth.

Doing one’s best is a chore.
Can I not do it? No more.
I have offered you all
But you just let it fall
In one **** messed up heap on the floor.

The gentleman is too proud, methinks
As is the lady, lazed and dazed, not, too aware
And with all her cares upon the brinks
She toys, with painted fingernails
She knows that not much of what she's doing's really fair
But is is it fair now, when it fails?

Ravished by lethargy, I sat outside, and gazed at the ground,
Then, thinking, how all the ants and flies went about so sound
About their business, I posed a question in my mind:
Are they aware of our misfortune, or are they blind
And thus continuing untroubled, and so unhindered,
And so thriving...? As we just sit, bewildered,
Inindustrious, confined as mentally
Just as we are physically...
And if we go, dozy giants that we are,
Neglecting of the fact, will it truly matter?

Why do I feel like I’m falling?
It isn’t me, it’s lost time falling
Away from my feet.

But why should time be lost,
When it is I that am lost,
I acknowledge my defeat

In the face of my own blind pride
And beg that you might spend another second beside
One who deserves to fall from grace,
But in its place
Is flying, soaring, hurtling,
At a rate so star-rate startling
I had to still my coursing thoughts to realise
All of this beauty is passing before my eyes
Passing in my life, and I saw none of it.
I accepted, lived in, used, but saw none of it.
Therefore it isn’t time that should be lost,
When I failed to make the most
Of it, when it’s my value that’s falling
And its is rising, and I’m failing
To match it, in its falling, and its rising,
And realising
Far too late, the worth
Of stopping, admiring, planting ones feet into the earth
For just a minute.
Living in the minute since I am, you are, we are, in it.

That which feeds, it also starves
By its memory. Life doesn’t do halves.
And life does halves, but people never do.
Tell me it’s false, or tell me it’s true,
I’ll believe both, but nothing in between
One would **** her too, they who say they love the queen
Just so, my love, you are both my hatred and my dearest
But passion – it picks the nearest
Extreme, extreme to the point of screaming
Dissembling, duplicitous, and seeming
But I will call it one or the other
God or vermin, foe or brother
You are all one and the same
And there is no distinction and no shame
From swinging – flame
The flame is the same
Always, we hate and love with one
We fixate on one
And fixation is both
Care and wrath
Emptiness consumes
And so assumes
Plenty, and excess is a vacuum
And I may surfeit of nothing and everything
No, I do not presume
I KNOW (nothing) and can(not) describe everything
So dear, when you call me “pain” and answer me not
I shall not assume I am forgot
Because in the very act of trying, or doing
Away with the memory of me, my memory still persists
And my absence insists
On my presence, and I am still your making, and undoing.

I am the bride of God but in this play;
Some 6 months standing from today
My boyfriend will be standing yet again
Administering soft words to the pain
Abounding through my mind, and in my hands,
Attempting to convey the mastery of foreign lands
And foreign times to a class of disenchanted youths,
Imagining a number of nightmarish truths
That may destroy my fantasy of July
And prove to my peers for once and for all that I
Am a failure... Hein? Non non. My Fall’s bruise
Is still felt, and Guilt, uneasy, guards my Muse
Yet I am Isabel, I am yet Rosine
And wonders are still yet to be felt and seen
Yes I will prove I can yet master quite the scene
And fantasise le meilleur Barbier that’s ever been…
And in the meantime, enjoy Thursday at the hour of one
Pronouncing French words that we’ve never done
Throw my darling down upon the floor,
Cry out on love though my throat is sore,
Stand the exam officer’s son upon a classroom chair,
Jerusalem’s tune rings loud within the air
When the main man fit it to Beaumarchais,
And my heart still rests with His tender couplet…
He only wagered all on my appearance from my jalousie
And I delivered, so let’s wait and see.

Three years ago to this very day,
I signed something of my soul away;

But that is love that doesn't last,
And present lives the longing past,
Though nothing of your face remains
In aught I look at, and the pains
Are well-healed scars, and I did best
To put all mementos to rest,
I even ceased to sing your songs,
Then made them my own, for these wrongs;

And still something of your prosody
Remains in my voice's melody.

Though I may be laughed at for my simplicity
I’d like to assure, I still have the capacity
To learn
To earn,
If they have listened properly to my life and all its cadences,
Each of my doubters’ respects and silences.

Frozen joints in a Georgian garret
Grudgingly stirring the fifth peasant soup
Shuffling shiftingly to share it
As lower eyelids, sleepless, hang and droop.
A right for some, a job in lands abroad
The luxury of learning dearly bought
And dearly payed for, still stalwartly moored
And chained with a ball, for living, sought.
I payed for a train to take me back
To the passion that will make a slave of me
But the company never had my back:
For two more score they would yet have of me.
What country fit for heroes is this?
What cradle for young hearts and minds make we?
And cushioned by the green stuff, dismiss
My wish that you may go where you take me.

You know, I'm not defined by this
I never was this, I never was his
I spent a little time
In a skin that wasn't mine
I played a small pantomime
Where I stumbled over every line
And you probably though this was me
But it isn't, and it's not who I want to be
The person I want to be is still banging on
The walls of my insides, still hanging on
For a day that she will come outside, even if
There is no one around to see it, maybe it's
Better that way, for the first time, I will strip off
And Remember what is wearing no glitz
That I thought was me, but my own skin -
I'm tired of the shape I see, I'm ashamed of how I appeared in
Your eyes; yet, there are people who believe still,
Who never stopped seeing the real girl.

That the heart is troubled by the heart that is troubled
That is not your own heart’s troubles: the ecstasy doubled
And the room beats full of hearts, overbubbled
In the heat of the moment and the drama that’s cobbled
Together by them, of real sorrows that aren’t theirs to share,
But very much theirs to tear and wear and overstare,
Because the blood cares only as much to care
For the fizz of the moment, and it isn’t your hair
That is being torn; it isn’t your paean that is being sung -
It’s you caterwhauling it, as you will, lung and lung;
And deranging the song, like ten cats being hung
And their guts played alive, violins freshly strung…
But forgive me, I tell you – this is the horror
Of those who will stake in another girl’s drama.
It’s not a piece of your pie, and it isn’t mine either;
I just know what it’s like, so spare us the fever,
And spare me the fiver, ‘cos I’ll dish you no more
Than nothing and dagger looks: The heart still beats sore.

Some three-quarters of the time the mind is a-whir
With all of the poisons and burdens I bear
And, honey, if I could be sober, I would, but I try.
I deny the flesh, and I deny the liquor,
I deny the substance, and God, and I'm sicker,
And, honey, if I could be sober, I would, but I die.
The answer it lies in my opposite hands
That try all at once to conquer new lands
And write terrible poems, and bake dastardly breads,
And still all my lovers lie cold in their beds -
I satisfy no one, not even myself.
But, honey, I try and be sober,
Though maybe that's not quite the answer,
And maybe that's why
Life has left me up high
On that dusty, dusty shelf.
But, honey, I wish I were sober
'Cos maybe all this would be over
Until another voice says "You're not lost enough."
And I say, Milady, you're plainly wrong,
For the wind is my carriage, and silence, my song,
I'm a diamond that can't cut herself out of the rough.
"Lose yourself to the zest, lose yourself to the tune
Of the rhythm of life, and find you will soon
There's another disinhibition that can aid you,
Turn that thing around, that madness that previously stayed you."
I'm full of good colour, I'm full of great life,
But I'm tied by confusion, who bares a keen knife,
If I embraced my health and my joy, then perhaps I'd be sweeter,
And I do like change, but I'd love for my mind to be neater
Or at least wilder with thoughts that bare better times
I'll try catch the rhythm, and I'll follow with rhymes
I'll be drunk on Life, not forever hungover,
It's only my outlook needs be a wee bit more sober.

Childhood lessons are revisited
But through the eyes of one much younger than myself
Old films, old books, old pictures, taken off the shelf
Are brought back to the eyes of one visited
By all that once I was told worthless;
I realise now it they aren't children that are earthless
They are us. What is it, that they teach us now?
How to compete, ******* others, ourselves, how
To deny life of its substance, and to be hypocrites to those we love
They give us empty quotes, say that we can prove
More just by thinking, and what of feeling?
What of looking, what of loving, what of kneeling
To thank the Earth for that which we have,
And that which we yet may give?
Rather than thinking solely of ourselves, let us do
That which our parents taught their children to be true.

What, when my intellect was too much,
And brash beauty too little?
And I seemed cool to all touch,
Made of paper and spittle
Like the wasp's nest that I am
And admit it now, I do,
And goodness how I own it too,
"They do not like green eggs and ham."
You've got the wrong end of the tale:
I'm caviar, champagne, and bread,
But I, alas, am not for sale,
And I give love freely from my head.
What, when my name is written in the stars,
Will you remember how you said I had it all
And still was not enough? Could you curse scars
That never felt a wound, and fall
From a tree you never climbed? You fool,
You wise fool, for your ignorant wisdom,
And your Fortune's shroud is still my chrysom,
Yet for my rising are you still the ghoul,
And ever will be. And still, live unhurt,
For how could you know disappointment
From one who you never gave appointment
And opportunity to commit such a curt
And curious crime? As how could you know,
Inert as you are, the blessings that could rain
On you, who are so averse to pain,
That you wouldn't risk letting Eden go?
How can you laud or regret,
That which you did never get?

You can say all roads lead to Rome
And a few lead to Wytham
Yes, a few lead to Wytham
As quiet as it is, but roam
Your way, on your bus, on your car:
I only know one, I only want one
And it may be long to go so far
On so little, but I shan't be gone
Unless it be by foot or on a bicycle
Run past the ruins of Godstow, the road
A minefield in sweet quiet from the bridge, tickle
The Trout, press the hedges at the goad
Of yet another motor, on bike or foot
On bike or foot, that I may kiss the ground
In pilgrimage to memory and childhood
Before the shades in which we're lost, we're found.

Do you wake up only even now?
She tugged on your toe, sleeping giant, for long
She did not speak in me, but spoke to me
Only now, you get up, and you bow
I grew up silent, my parents saying that shouting is wrong
Perhaps it is, but speaking firmly and clearly
Is the opposite – It demonstrates control and frustrates the enemy
Let measure be your ally, sleeping giant, as you unfurl like an anemone
Though you slept through her trying
Through her crying,
You heard little. True, you woke up sometimes,
And moved mountains, but the times
Are still cruel to her, and you, as the big man, must protect
Those who are oppressed, else your size is your greatest defect -
They are not lords that forget their strength, and so, their duty
To aid those who are in difficulty.

I learnt to start justifying my actions
After years of crying sin
On everything I did and said
And only now the thought pervades my head
Now that I can breath, and I have no one to wrong
Just how wrong I was for the long
Of these two years.
Amongst my fears
I count – Will I ever be as brave, as honest, as forgiving, as principled
As before the time the reality of Life hit me, violent, raw, carried me on its current, limp, unbridled?
Will I find Truth again
Not calling it vain
To struggle and fight
For what is right?
Will I learn to forgive myself, not because ‘it was a hard time, too hard for me to take’,
But come out of the shame I have descended into, and give forgiveness for its own sake?

If only I knew "mind over matter" in my heart
I should not be paying for my youthful sins
And my transgressions stand apart
From others, because I do not know the outs and ins
Of bars and flesh, but rather human character
And the confines of my mind

If only I knew that "a stitch in time saves nine"
As well as I know my hometown blind
How in my soul I knew that I would dine
Upon the mould of fruits of being kind
To nothing bearing even a love's spectre
I threw all warnings to the Wynd

And over the summer I have gained a new coat
I shun the cold of loneliness and pain
I seek not to hide from the iodine
Troubles no longer merit building a moat
I smile in the face of lions
I can take defeat upon my chin
I do not know its name within
Tomorrow ever has only more scions

But my sins come back to haunt me
The old moat crumbled inward, letting me know
I still look on his face, and it does daunt me
That I must pick up my tools that I may grow
Because the damage doesn't go, it only festers
To bite back later when I think I'm fine
Even with the mood of ten-score jesters
Taking down Hell is much a task divine.

Fire and brimstone in a head
That rests upon my hands,
On my soft pillow on my bed,
Upon my shoulders, even in foreign lands.
A shell just slightly thicker than an egg’s,
But there is no yolk, only firecrackers
That my heart implores, charges, begs
To stop, before the shell truly shatters
Spitting out the grey matter to populate the skies
With nebulae, since I neglected to be wise.

My soul was steeped in guilt
Ink was over my conscience, spilt
Obscured, I felt my way through life
Treading carefully on the knife
Edge I used sometimes to cut my dignity
In pain and shame and in indignity
I’d become addicted to more pain
When life dealt it to me again
When I dealt it to me again
I became blind, I saw no gain
I wished for death, I wished for light
I wished that walking through the night
I might be swallowed into the ghost realm
Where once I stood with my pen at the helm
Rewriting, writing, making history
I still think it is a mystery
In some senses, that I pulled through and made it out alive
Only to survive
With guilt, and my parents now holding me
From falling deeper into the emotional self-harming sea.

Some things get you down,
And getting up again,
Just when you had regained your crown
This morning, after ages of pain,
Is difficult, especially alone.
Talking to loved ones feels only slightly better;
All methods of self-care are gone;
So I write a letter,
A short thing, saying, Guys
Life has lows and highs:
There will be vermin on this earth -
Don't let their arrogance push down your own worth.

Once more, through town upon my bike, I flew
On Marston Rd, to think, that once, I knew
This road was as the daily one to school.
Then up through Cowley, thinking myself a fool
That hot summer’s day
To make the same way
Down Magdalen St so late, so mad,
Thinking of the fun I had…
Then down past school, the roundabout
Where I’d do a quarter turn about
Each and every day a month ago.
Even past the fields, father would not let the river slow,
The river of my memories, as he asked were these familiar to me
Too? And so they were; Rounders, tennis, punting days’ insanity
Have not escaped my mind just yet.
Up High St, past the colleges, I could not bet
For thoughts to be abated. My sweet town
Bereft of all but my memories strewn down
As I still rode on, and down Queen’s Lane now
Where many a happy lonely moment was spent, thinking how
I rushed down there with shopping early before Christmas…
Taking the corner, admiring the blooms, and fast
The next one, and my chest is filled with a twinge
As I remember a rainy night beneath New College Bridge…
Then St Helen’s Passage, the Bridge of Sighs, the Sheldonian!
My sweetest, proudest moments as an Oxonian…
Broad St, broad and small from lack of crowds
Still my head is in the clouds -
And St Mary Magdalen, the concert with my brother in winter,
The Ashmolean standing tall within the hinter,
And up St Giles, and down the Lamb and Flag,
Thinking of the afternoons I’d sometimes drag
Walking there, various aims or none in mind,
Now leaving the Natural History Museum behind,
And Dad reminds me of the trees that used used to fruit
Along Park Rd where now there are none… So, en route.

I was ever most faithful to my labour,
A duty that I never paid to man:
And even now, I am stripped of this favour,
No more am I my workplace's loyal fan.

I wish I could say our romance has cooled off,
That I'm not stirred by spreadsheets' disarray,
Alas, those items firmly must be ruled off,
And here the reasons be for this decay:

I was profoundly lucky in employment:
I worshipped bosses justly - they were gods.
I worked hard, in this toil I found enjoyment,
Because my contract listed all the odds.

I did not sign to slavery, dear Master,
I did not sign my health and bloom away,
I did not sign that you could be a b@st@rd
When things were simply not going your way,

I did not sign to poverty and worry,
I did not sign to papers gath'ring dust,
I did not sign that you cannot be sorry,
For I have rights, and note this down you must:

I did not sign to shoulder all these burdens,
Because they are not written on the page!
You cannot simply smile, and draw the curtains,
You cannot make us objects of your rage

When you yourself do run the ship so poorly!
I pity you, but pity is not love;
And thus I sign myself, proudly, and sorely,

A woman pushed to crashing by your shove.

I forgive easily, give second chances easily, give easily
I give up more than I can, feasibly,
Until I realise, the stone idol, earthquake crumbling, does nothing but rain stones on me
And I am already so deeply entrenched,
That I forget how to seek strength,
From a God that hasn’t forsaken me.

This minute gives me no strong feelings - “...Going no where...”,
Stornoway, you had it there
Yet we are, just slowly, as slowly as Boats and Trains
And I fear unrequited love too, and I fear the rains
That bless tomorrow, and I fear Dad’s bottle of wine
Will never see the day when the light will shine
Through glasses it’s poured into, and our eyes, and our hearts
I don’t think anyone has even thought about rehearsing their parts
‘Cos it’s a very, very, very long way a way
Too too long way away, freedom to love, to smile, to breath, day.

“Whilst often I do have the guts to write
Outrageous verse to pin for all to see
I sometimes do wish that on such a night
There might yet be some guts left within me
To write something that just you’d understand
Something that speaks and signs a tune unread
Tales of a time of no such “upper hand”
Notes of life within those once thought dead
And something realer than this pretend verse shows
In all its mad combining and design
Song text written down for modern freak shows
A paean for a thing that isn’t mine.”

Wrote the poet to the singer, who was in bed,
And who sighed in annoyance, and left him on read.

When this is all over,
Assuming it’s nice weather,
Let’s take punt of some description and conquer the Thames.
When this is all over,
When we can meet together,
Let’s make all Oxford sick of our songs and games.
The air cries for youthful fun and folly,
The butterflies, birds and brooks are jolly,
I look on and I smile, but inside I’m glum;
Since this promising May
Makes no promise today
The date on which the end of this prison shall finally come.

When this is all over,
Let’s take to fields of clover,
Let’s tear down through New College Lane
Crying for the love of life though you’d think we’re insane
I’m tired of walking and having to feign
Being happy, when the secret to happiness shall always remain:

“Por sentir la gioia,
devi condividerla” - Mark Twain

Who am I, who lost so much to Love,
And lose much to Him still?
I stood on a pedestal above,
And crashed down from the windowsill.
Who am I, that for His sake lose time,
And wit, and manners, I,
Who could have given more to rhyme
That served me better? Fie!
Fie, fie, madam, rest your powers,
Deny that in those fruitless hours
You didn't sit by the radiator,
Cold for your lack of care, and to the heart,
Beaten by your own stern cruelty?
How like a gladiator
You sought your doom, for a greater part,
Called idle indulgent torture "duty"?
Deny the useless minutes spent
Searching for a sign in nothing.
Defy the fact, intently bent,
That you made Chaos "something".
Oh I, who on my knees did weep,
And sometimes dreamt revenge
Upon the object that my sleep
Abhorred, isn't it strange,
That all the blame in all this head-long history,
Should rest upon the wounded, me?
Because I cannot help but choose to love,
As my heart's mistress, though my fancies move
According to their spheres, but I
Could be less cruel to her whose hand does feed me,
I could be my own knight and wave imagined scoundrels
Into air, much less dream and die
Upon the sword I meant to cut the heart that could precede me
And mine. Life, I thought, gave me the mandrels,
But truth be so - Eros, oh errors,
I have bent my back in your service,
And by my own will,
For loved I truly, I should be whole still.

I bear a pain that's all your own,
Perhaps we switched, unknowing,
For if you've this, and I have both,
Then where is Justice going?
Perhaps you'll say, you know it's true
That there is no such honour,
And, every day, the less we'll rue,
Move onward, and why bother?
A painful stride of mine this is
To carry both our crosses -
The irony, the state, is this:
I cut, and hold, our losses.

But in a prayer, I should find light,
And with more prayers, you'll find yours,
My pride knows nothing but the fight,
Is known to beat on blind doors;
I was a fool, and this I know,
To kiss, or write, or wander,
But human nature errs, and so
There's now, there's then, and yonder.

Scant verse I offer now to you
With little wisdom to it:
A broken record with no view
Of how I'd be a poet:
Thinking that artists paint all things,
And words are nothing sacred,
No sorries are there, and no strings,
No reparations make it.

Why I should bow out in disgrace,
Why I should worsen suffering,
Endart mine eye in yours, and face:
I said much, and said nothing.

They all spoke of love, and I knew nothing of it
They spoke of songs, of kisses, of joy
And I longed to know something of it
And I tried, tried, and tried again to find the “right boy”

Then love found me, and I thought I was happy
Or that I would be now, now that I had someone to hold
Too late I realised the sickly sweetness, relationships too sappy
To my taste, though each time I tried something more bold
Thinking, can we both, can I, come closer to the foretold bliss?
Surely there is something more to this than this?

I went in with a picture of knights and damsels
Of long sigh-full poetry into blackest night
Each second lit by single candles
Their image always in my sight

I went in thinking I’d move earth and sky
I thought the strength of love would make us great
And only now begin to wonder why
I thought this was the one and only fate

They all speak of love, and I know nothing of it
Nothing of what they speak, at any rate
Somehow I doubt that I’ll know any of it
Though I am surrounded, so lonely is my state.