What gives me the right to live? 
The right to enjoy the wonders around me,
Breathe the frosty air in this light warmth,
Gaze at specks hovering in the sky north, 
Hear the daily crowing commotion on earth. 

Is being alive enough to warrant my life? 
Or do I need to carry my weight?
The burden plaguing me with strife,
For the world, for my family, for my own estate. 

What value do I hold? 
Are the fragments I leave behind enough?
Is the web I spun enough to behold?  
Or am I the center of my own slough?

All these years, all the circles in my base,
Yet I can not see past my face.
No, it is all that I have taken,
That leaves me forsaken. 

Clearly I have tipped my scale,
I have not upheld my bargain.
It is only then fair I am offered no bail,
And shackled to a rusted tin.

I am selfish.
Pride I lament, yet bask in its fruits. 
I never was a kingfish,
Nor a giving tree with never-ending roots.

Just a man who lost his value,
In his quest to build it out of mildew.