Most poets will perhaps write of the betrayal of their love by a former
lover. I have decided to turn this around a bit, and look at our own
tendencies to betray, however small. Autobiographical, you ask? Don't
push too much! But perhaps it applies to many of us.
POSSESSION
Bob Ludden
http://www.essex1.com/people/robert/
One trace of dust beyond the stratosphere-
That's all it was.
One nanosecond's excrement
From a continuum of time layed plain
Before you, giving of myself
Beyond all thought of gain.
That's how it was, and surely powers above
Would nod in their beneficence,
And beam their benediction to
This celebrant before the altar of his love.
How ready, I, to measure my devotion
In cups of sacrifice, and time, and noble words!
How reticent, to look inside
And find their bottoms rusted near away,
But blind to the contaminant
Which oozes from my ego, still demanding
First, that I possess that object of desire
You have personified.
So thus, I chose the path of strategy.
Pure offering upon my altar
Now impossible...I could not look at it.
No thurible could ever cleanse deception,
For that is what it was...and I was free
to make of it whatever hurt that I could fashion
in my mind, and justify as microscopic.
To claim that I did not betray my love
Betrays myself--that particle of acid
Gnaws insatiably, and rhetoric
May neutralize it only for a time
While I am Everyman.
