A poem I wrote for creative writing coursework last year, about the struggle between the emotions 'joy' and 'woe' in someone's brain. It was heavily inspired by John Milton's 'Il Penseroso'
Hence my torn, wretched brain
An immortal battle, destined and done
Hath my sanity gone?
Drowning in feeling, after a birth maim
Which sliced my mind in two
Inhabiting a juxtaposing twin
Duelling from within
Sole decisions perplex for hours
Far beyond my powers
One Woe, one Joy, replenishing their coup
Hail Joy, embodied like a Goddess
Shrouded in a golden dress
Euphoric under gleeful beam
For she is one of our dreams
Adopting what may bring me bliss
Appraisal like a well-won kiss
Felicity bestowed for delight
Woe in hostility from this fright
Mere mention of an exuberance
Spirals into sorrowful trance
Persuades a route of melancholy
Endorses what is right and holy
For desolation tails our sin
Which one should purge from within
Homage Misery, the subsequent
Grounding me with an anchor’s dent
Let it be known, to be modest
Clutches at the hands of sadness
For Woe is wrapped in a vortex
Unhappiness – black – she ejects
Shadows monosyllabic choices
Fought by Pleasure’s tongues and voices
Muffled by lamb’s wool, by new-born’s fuzz
Ecstasy flows with electric buzz
“Select what will bring elation
Not whom escorts vile dejection”
Allergic to her sister’s despair
Happiness amends to disrepair
These parasites, whom I play host
Forced to hear the winner’s boast
While the other slinks deviously
Pounce prepared meticulously
On a coming alternative
I unknowingly grant and give
To Exhilaration and Gloom
O my poor head hath no room!
(Woe smirks at relentless anguish)
O to most this seems outlandish
Mind carved into quarrelling divide
Joy and Woe on either side
Pilot to each option I conduct
Pair of twins, with me, are stuck
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