Even from the start

I had the best of intentions at heart.

Though everything I did turned out wrong,

to the point I could not even hear our song.

What I did is of too great consequence,

but just answer me this:

To what do you hold on to?

For who, what, or why do you do?

In the beginning, my goal

was happiness, my wish with all my soul.

I failed some,

and success was too long to come.

I transitioned between passions,

leaving them behind with so many new missions.

Then, I realized what is never known enough:

that the greatest and most important goal is love.

“To love and to be loved” said George Sand.

Lost at sea, my soul cried ‘Land!’

I had found what I was looking for,

it was felt even unto my core.

However, with the betrayal of my own

I found myself yet alone.

to live to make others happy is an end

to which the err has no mend.

Who was I to bring

others down with me into the lingering

recesses that I fell into?

In relying on, or in living for, others; it seems

as it appears that together it means

one and the same.

Just with a difference of name.

To have worth, not joy,

one must be an element, without any alloy.

To be unaffected and to have no effect

is the path to which I must defect.

To not be interested or involved with others

is a thought that smothers.

It has absolutely no precept,

making it all the harder to accept.

To leave it all behind

to be at peace, alone, and single in mind.

I miss all that I had,

but this will be no passing fad.

Being as I must be,

for myself, no one else, me.

I have retraced all those things

which each one in my mind rings

as being what I lived for

some time way before.

I have analyzed each.

Though the common factor seems just out of reach.

Some of these things were recurring,

the joy and purpose too tantalizing, too alluring.

Some were just simply bromides,

the indulgence in them was just so many crimes.

Each visceral or ethereal intent, inertia, impetus

was unique, yet repetitious.

Single points of bright, yet opaque or shuttered light

that I could, if I followed, be lead right

along into an unknown constellation

or some other sort of framework or concept of construction.

Or they would lead like headlights on a passing car

as you get closer, it is not as far,

leading to a terrible crash

which to avoid conceiving my conscience does thrash.

What do you live for?

It is the quintessential conundrum that you cannot ignore.