The Destructive Disease of the Soul

No amount of thought Could negate Suffering in the mind Of Francis Phoenix.   That much he had always believed, That humanity is a sad, lost And suffering race. Sometimes he felt it so strongly That the worship of a Saviour seemed To be the only sane act on earth, And then it passed. It was not increasing callousness, But an increase in the number of moments He felt quite intoxicated with compassion That had soured Frank's outlook.   During those moments, he wept For all those he'd ever been cruel to. He could be so hard on people, So terribly hard. To whom could he ask forgiveness?   It was his sensitivity That bred those moments of Christlike love, When he cared so little for himself, For his body, even for his soul When it was the soul of his father, The soul of his mother, The souls of his friends and relatives And everyone he'd ever known That he cared about.   That was truth, that was reality, That was the purpose of all human life, That love, that benevolence, That absolute forgiveness. Otherworldly love is painful, But it is the only true freedom known to Man. Too much thought eventually produces the conviction That nothing is worth doing. Thought is a destructive disease of the soul. (Both "The Destructive Disease of the Soul" and "The Compensatory Man Par Excellence" possess as their starting points a novel written at an estimate around 1987. I believe most of it was destroyed some six years thereafter.)