a struggle, perhaps

these reading portfolios

the effort

this work [they say] i know
rips out my heart
my soul and leaves
nothing a dark
black void nullified
most of all
by weakness there resides
not a broken spirit
but the lack of one presents
the drainéd, empty soul [just
one fashioned by strained self staggering
down the long road that has been believed
to lead to the paradise of pride emplaced
in joy from the successive results embodying
the resulting success]

this isn't the original poem... i first wrote it in class after getting back my math paper. it was quite despairing. bad result after bad result. i wondered why it had happened. perhaps it was because of burnout. the portfolio takes a lot out of me, but returns little. i suppose the original poem was best though. it has punctuation and i think it contains the essence of the anguish:

this reading portfolio,
rips out my heart
my soul, and leaves
nothing. a dark
black void of null
most of all
weakness. there resides,
not a broken spirit
but the lack of one

wonder what royce was talking about in the previous post by him.