Untitled, or "I Hate Mood Swings"

Can the well-padded soul produce poetry?
Perhaps--
ponderous plodding,
pedantic petulancy,
pablum.

A starved spirit
spare and pinched,
weak with longing for the unobtainable:
this serves far better.
And if there is pain--
ah, better still.

Soul in torment,
pricked and suffering,
alone in fear and darkness,
squinting, hands cupped,
reaching for a single glint
which may be but a fist
rubbed in tired eyes.

Or that joy so acute
'tis as much pain as pleasure,
too much for human soul to bear,
draining, emptying even as it fills
until one may wish never to have known
such sweetness.

Is it all worth it, the aching,
the endless need,
the pain within ecstasy,
ecstasy within pain,
the never resting spirit?
Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Perhaps a placid permanance
is its own reward.