Great Vanity of vanities
How much Art and feeling
In our world today
Is warped and twisted
Perverted and falsified
Willingly
For the poisonous pleasures
Of Reward or Fame?

I admire the man
Who left only his zither and a donkey
And the donkey ill at that
But he left his rhymes
His touch on our Times
The pure sense of his thought
In the letters that he wrought.

Let me try instead
To bend my head
Embrace poor and meek
And never seek
Praise or Reward
And never be torn
By withering scorn
The plentiful sneering
of proud men jeering

I just ask you to know
I tried to show
without doctrine or preaching
or toffee nosed teaching
the flawed Art  
of my beating heart

Let me leave behind
the honest confusion
of a groping mind
and the scars of contusion
a hint of the sleepless
the long nights pacing
thoughts wildly racing
all seen by
who?

Perhaps all this cacophony
The madness, the rage
Cannot be nailed
To a printed page
Perhaps the lone witness
The jury in court
The only observer
Of the demons I've fought
Is present only
in the silent rays
When a quiet sun
Through mist and trees
Creeps in and visits
And often sees

A small man, rhyming, puzzling long
Composing, two fingered, his feeble song.