Bring In The Clowns

If it were a teachable virtue
to accept what we have,
rather than mourn for what
eludes us, a state of happiness
would engulf us all. The
intractable impulse to achieve,
to win, to create and to search
would never disturb our
placid egos, never would we
experience through our deeply
conflicted natures the need
to compete with our own
singular struggles to achieve
our own particular fixations
of success. We are afflicted
with a driven pathology of need,
to hold in disdain what we have,
to strive toward an ideal none
are likely but the rare geniuses
among us to realize, and even
they too chafe fruitlessly at
their human limitations,
living lives of silent despair.