the regrets of a lesser being

[Leanne]

So life,
I’ve been neglecting you?

Spending all my time
as a man-servant to anxiety. -- maybe a comma would work better here
A slave to black depression?

As a token of my regret
I offer you this gift
of peerless beauty. -- again, maybe a comma -- I often find that commas to end a stanza make for a really interesting pause effect, with heightened expectation

Wrenched from beneath my ribs.

Formed into a likeness
of what life must be like
for the pure and the guiltless. -- those bastards!

This love I have shaped
with my own two hands.

Working the raw red clay
until my hands dripped scarlet

all over

the splintered bench. -- really effective use of white space, so clean after very visceral imagery

Excellent title, John, and the poem is very bitter, not only to the speaker-self but also to the ridiculous expectations of society and the "normal people".