I had a friend once who reveled in gloominess and all things gloomy. I wrote this poem for him as a parody, to perhaps shock him out of it. To my surprise he embraced the poem and wore it as a badge of honor.

The Gloom

I have been one accustomed to the gloom.
I have wrapped its warm arms around me to shield me from the harsh light of morning.
I have folded its gossamer strands of darkness into my being or so it seemed.
I have listened to its tales.
In the corners of my mind the light always twisting, resisting
I shy from its lack of substance.
“But there it is”  I think, and then proudly, I see its shadow
A mere form, a suggestion of what I imagine.
I grasp at it, at nothingness,
My house of dark cards falling at my feet.
How sweetly I gather them, dearly imagining their fleeting form
Even as I shuffle them afresh for a new day’s toil.
The illusion of night, a fools foil.
Rushes up to fill my mind, a world imagined
Which is only the absence of anything real or revealed.
I have been one accustomed to the gloom
And maddened by its illusion.