Yesterday, I failed

I failed, and the failing was great thereof.
I failed all the way to the sulphur cliffs of cynicism, then bungee-jumped.
I shot a hole in one in failure.
I failed and changed the course of history.
I failed admirably, catastrophically, unremittingly, relentlessly, perspicaciously,
deliciously, spaciously, and with the dexterity of the common impala.
I did not merely stall, pause, or change my mind –
I failed, like any serious attempt at oil painting in a wind machine.
I failed, but the crops did not.
I failed in a field, and filed as I fooled.
I walked right up to failure, kicked it in the shins, and insulted its mother.
I fell in love with failure. We got married and raised a family of failures.
I failed to the sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle.
I failed in the key of D flat.
I failed my heart out, I failed until my lungs burned, my brain rattled, my skin flapped
like a rag against my bones and my tongue uttered only ‘failure’…
I failed, much to the regret of the management.
I went scuba-diving in failure, I camped under failure, I hiked to the summit of
failure, I painted the floor with superglue while failure was sleeping and when
it woke up…. I laughed.
I failed in several languages.
I added failure on Facebook.
I failed from caveman to Homo Sapiens.
I failed stupendously, outlandishly, biblically, savagely, juicily, Byzantinely,
heroically, intergalactically.
I failed in hard copy, fax, text, email, Skype, and podcast.
I failed to the soundtrack of James Bond.
I failed as magnesium is to water, as the Apocalypse is to a Saturday morning lie-in,
as Godzilla is to the streets of Tokyo.
I failed, and I failed,
but at least
I tried.

first published in The Stinging Fly (2008), reprinted in Inroads (Seren 2010)