seeing the sun

You didn’t really expect to find anything more
beneath the surface of all of this
did you?

Beyond the cheap and oh so uninspiring banter
that cheekily exudes from these
desiccated lips,

beneath the greying ever expanding skin that binds
within a perpetually painful collection
of pointless bits,

besides the once unrestrainedly fertile imagination
that birthed nearly clever books
and pithy boasts—

there is nothing more today than an aching heart
that occasionally weeps unnoticed
for its youth

and a prayer never spoken, not even once
but clung to for the simple hope
of seeing the sun again.