Written at a Friend

Someone I knew; falling into the same traps over and over again -- even after she got the man!

There's absolutely nothing I can do about it, is there?
You'll just fog up, over again and again;
all your old hot air obscuring your looking glass till blind:
try harder, try harder -- ah! it is too hard to try.

You keep your bed with a leech, who could hate the sky
more than you do. I have envied you, and for what?
That freedom you are slave to: all the loose-ended magic.
There’s a look in your eye you've sullied

with every double-take. You're a parrot
of temptations, a rehearsal for misery:
You've had the hand I've heard you cry for
and yet that dubious dud doesn't deliver?

Now, the vespers are crawling like a child just learning,
and I notice the dust under my printer. I've been
off, and all for the sake of breathing life into lives
so sunken in, like yours. I've avoided my own.

Remiss for the sake of redressing; recall rolling
rapidly. Dare rappel into that acne scar of one too many mistakes?
You’ve impressed me with the frame, yet where’s the picture?
Your fabulous future? The success?
 

Or was it a lie? Do I know thee? Am I Lear? Cordelia,
Cordelia, forgive my mind; I will not banish you again,
but remind me of who you are
for my head is not perfect. Amnesia: I will find you still,

with the same hope you prop up in your eyes to greet me with.
You will share some comfort-food-words,
and I will go off fooled. Both you and the bed-bug
live to fool me. I've made marble statues out
 

of both your histories. Soiled! All the work
of my hands is tardy,
all the work of my heart is tawdry,
and all the work of my tongue and cheek, tipped:

I have no want for your smile
if you only guarantee your own frown. Decrypted:
you are not the theatre masks; your drama is unwritten,
the lines that bring you down are your own, unscripted.

Author's Note

Certainly not my best. It's a mummy; I wrote it a while ago.

Reviews

[J.Black]

Have you gone crazy? This was pretty good. I enjoyed it!

[LadyLove]

Don't so many avoid their own lives and sacrifice for those who never really merited the hands and eyes raised for them? But should we be taken for granted and pushed aside..then looked at again as an "oh well" is unflattering to the heart. Amnesia is right and so is the No I don't know you..go back to the bedbug you chose! This piece shows an anger and hurt of the soul that can't be forgotten. I'd love to see if you can rework it in a powerful rhyming piece...just for the exercise. Relive the feeling and tug your brain.