10 Minutes' Work

Prey

I fled down trackless wastes of drifting snow
Where unforsaken souls are loath to roam
And where horizon joins the slate to gray
In ganzfeld uniformity.

For here my heart, bereft of warming blood
Cries not for loss; but sterile, wan and sere,
Reflects the cheerlessness of God's dead ends
And beats against the tide of fate.

All time the same, eternity's last hour
In microcosmic pageant lost, misspent,
Betrayed by all and all betraying self,
Stands still and I shall flee no more.

...................................

I've been reading a lot of bad poetry lately and was sure that I could do better in 10 minutes. This is what I came up with. "Ganzfeld" is a term from psychology experiments; when having nothing on which to focus, people tend to hallucinate, seeing things. The beginning seems to be influenced by "The Hound of Heaven" by Francis Thompson and the phrase "wan and sere" certainly was lifted from E.A. Poe, probably from "Ulalume" or "Annabel Lee."

The lack of visual imagery makes it dry, but I think fits the emptiness of the piece. And, no, I'm not in a bad mood - happy poems just take longer to write.