Every Cliche in the Book

Let me be impure.
Let me make mistakes.
Let me err.
Let me wander off the course.

I still want to be good.

To be good is to return,
To come back to the truth again and again, not
Not to falter, but to falter
And remain. To be good
Is to progress behind
Regress and transgression.
To be good is to begin back at the end.

I have wasted myself
On amusements,
Sweet things, tasteless things:
Games, sex, sleep.

I haven't kept up with poetry.
I haven't looked towards the good.
I've become too honest for poetry:
I'm no longer bold enough to lie.

I'm lost. But you come to yourself
When you're lost. You realize where you are.
Because you lose yourself in everyday
"business as usual". You don't see what's in front of you
Because "you know your way about". When I'm lost
I "come to myself with a start".

I come to myself -- I come back to myself --
I realize where I'm going, where I am, who I am.
I realize that I'm not what I thought,
That I've outstripped myself -- because
I've fallen behind. I come back to myself
"With a start" -- fresh:
Disorientation is reorientation.

But it can't last.

You can't stay still and simply look at things for long.
The world catches up to you, and you fall back
Into the rhythm of the day.

That gives you pause: will I always wander off
And wander back, from thing to thing?
Can I break off everything I've started
To begin again? And isn't this perpetual renewal
Getting old -- isn't it beginning
To wear me down?

To stay in place or to move -- to rest or to be wrenched --
Tired business. I want peace -- clarity and peace --
No more weary wandering. But I can't rest
Until I've found myself, and I cannot find myself
Because I'm not here -- because I've lost myself
Too often to come back to where I am. Where I am
Is someplace I am not, and I've forgotten
How I got there. Everything is endless,
And yet, just because it's endless,
It must have an end.

If I cannot find the end
Then it will soon end me.

I don't know how to end this.