Ok.  This assignment was to write a poem of 40 lines or more with 4 words or less in each line.  But I, being the non-conformist that I am, decided it wasn't enough to just slap together 4 words a line and call it a day.  I decided that my lines would alternate between 8 syllables and 6 syllables, which then naturally forced the diction into the stratosphere as I went seeking words big enough and coherent enough to pack together like that.  The first idea I had was actually the phrase "melancholy misery,"
which I saw as the name of a person who was indeed both melancholy and miserable.  As for why they would be both things, I decided that after much thought, he should be a middle aged man whose life, while superficially good, was rather painful in the Fight Club / American Beauty sense.  I figured perhaps this guy was trying so hard to make himself happy, but his adherence to his chosen life was not allowing him to fully let go and be happy.  He went out and got drunk all the time looking for happiness in the bottle, but that is ultimately futile.  Ok, perhaps the middle section lampooning the suburban life is rather harsh, but I felt that I had to evaluate at some point if these things were really symbolic of a happy life, or of a life that was imprisoned in consumerist materialist dogma.  In the end though, I try to show how ultimately hopeless this path is, as the only thing which brings some measure of satisfaction to Melancholy Misery is to die constantly just so that he can feel important when others mourn for him; even then, he does not realize that this mourning is not completely genuine, nor will it last.  And in the end, without substantial change, the misery of his life will never abate.