I owe this one largely to John Keats.  Not because his poetry inspired me, like Byron I think it's nothing but shit.  But, the man did have some skill in manipulating words and line structures, and I mostly wanted to emulate the variations of form within the form that Keats employed so often.  So as I sat there during literature one day during our discussion of some poem of his, Malfeasance just began writing itself, although originally it started out as iambic pentameter; it wasn't until a few days after I finished when I decided that pentameter was too long and was forcing inclusion of extraneous words in too many lines.  There was only one three line section, beginning with line 21, which in the original version (reprinted below) proved difficult to reduce- thankfully difficult is not impossible.  I also must confess that at first the reason I liked the title was that to me it reeked of putrescence and feculence, olfactory imagery that somehow the meaning of the word doesn't carry.  But, also thankfully, it still worked out nicely.  This, of late, is one of my new favorites, just for the way it blends more serious and varied imagery with my old familiar themes.  Not to mention, its a somewhat more mature effort than its predecessors, which is also pleasing to me.  At any rate, here is the original, from which you can see the changes I made and how it impacts the outcome:

Malfeasance

I've known things that I wish I'd never seen
And been people I wish I'd never been
And done things that I most wished not to do
And all for what, the sorrowed tale of you?
Ah, so I've lived in shadows of excess
From which my overburdened heart digress
Cannot, though all its stirring fibers try
With might worthy of Hercules.  And I,
What have I but my anguish to survive
That from your icy hatred will derive
Until my cup flows over with your charms
That then go setting off my soul's alarms?
Oh, what demon has slaughtered off my pride
Other than he that I can see inside
The silvered glass of mirrors, he who lives
And dies by edges of the hastened shivs
Forged by the smiths within your rocky core
Who mine my mantle for your bitter ore?
What have I in this life I've left to live,
What have I but my blood I cannot give
Though not for lack of wanting to divest
That to you which you refused to ingest?
So save the hollow leaden smile you dare
To show to those your fangs you wish to bare
Such as myself, the carcass of the one
You left out in the desert's brutal sun
To die a second death.  Oh what a joy
'Tis not, to perish from betrayal's ploy,
To string myself out into the thin line
You cut down like the parasitic vine
Hanging over the sterling silver home
You call your life.  No matter where I roam
Will be a dusty path leading me back
To where the fondness for it do I lack-

I've known that which I wish I'd never seen
And been to where no man before has been,
Within the dank dead garden of your hate
Where roses bloom blackened, never to sate
The passersby who stop to take a scent
And smell but malfeasance of discontent.