to be or not to be

To be or not to be, forever,
that is the question
and this not an answer
but a poetic suggestion

when the road ahead
seems mad, twisting, and dire
and the dread arrows of fortune
fall upon you lit with fire

when you see that old confidence
was oft based on airy myths,
and new comfort seems many miles hence
when you cannot trust the mind
that you probe the world with,

then the question becomes very real
and the struggle, for me,
is not between misery
and fear of a fiery hereafter

but a tricky choice
between believing in the dismality
of how my world appears...

or in remembered hopes,
in glimpses of beautiful possibilities
and in common wonders
like the pretty, young black girl
I saw today
or the melodic seduction of Beck's "mutations"

and I emerge from my ruminations
like Hamlet, not grasping for a bare bodkin
but seeking new and better timber
with which to re-fit my ship
for a sea of troubles