A little action

Swim, swim aching soul
through the mighty sea of earth.
Feel the cool licking of countless teeming bodies rushing past,
how can we choose whom to breathe and whom to expel?
I cannot choose at all;
they come and go or don't,
with joys and woes, dreams and fears,
always too quick for my staggered gasps of breath.

How I would have loved them,
but my limbs are short and knobby,
my gurgling lungs atrophied for want of a good cry,
my lips unable to pray a kiss.
This human drama has me;
I fly but sink, limp and exhausted
surrendering to a solitary journey; floundering listlessly through
the golds and the roses and the tears
to the bottom, like a needle, never touching anything.