An End to a Dream

It’s an age since I last picked up this pen,

An age since I scrawled a word,

There once was a time when I’d write it down,

All that I’d seen, or heard,

And still it sits on each scrawling page

A life, that someone may read,

Cut short, when I put away the pen,

When the ink had begun to bleed.

Some things are just too awful to tell,

It’s better they be forgot,

To raise the seventh circle of hell

Is like a forget-me-not.

It shouldn’t be preserved on the page

Reminding of pain and loss,

For sadness, grief, sorrow and rage

Will ever be tempest tossed.

And Geraldine was a case in point

I’d thought that she loved me true,

She seemed to care, and she’d always swear,

‘I’ll never be leaving you.’

For years we seemed to live in a dream

We had what we thought we’d need,

That no-one else could come in-between,

And trust was our common creed.

But then she started staying out late

To work, she said, for the boss,

And I would wait, alone by the gate,

While feeling a sense of loss.

I knew that he was younger than me

Was wealthier then, by far,

And she’d recline, while reeking of wine

Then clamber up out of his car.

‘We only stopped for a drink,’ she’d say,

‘It isn’t a federal crime.’

‘You never go out for a drink with me,

So who are you, his, or mine?’

‘You make too much of a trivial thing,

I’m just keeping in with the boss.’

Then I would say, ‘well have it your way,

But everything comes with a cost.’

We slept that night, each facing away

On opposite sides of the bed,

With Geraldine, as stubborn as hell,

There wasn’t much more to be said.

And that was the start of the end for us,

I couldn’t believe our plight,

It just got worse, when she with a curse,

Just didn’t come home one night.

Some things are just too awful to tell,

It’s murky the deeper you wade,

And she brought home the circle of hell,

She said that he’d given her AIDS.

She cried a torrent and reached for me

But I shrank back, and away,

The years have fled, there’s grief in my head,

For Geraldine died yesterday.

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[A Soap Mess Stories]

A lesson to be learned in story form. Well told.

[Susan 🦋]

Some people no matter how bad they have it...never cheat. Other's cheat, no matter how good it is. Such a lesson.

[Coyote Poetry]

A sad tale shared dear friend. You create people and lives. Some people hold on and some people looking for more. More, can be a heavy payment. A sad ending to tale. Thank you David for sharing the powerful and worthwhile poetry.
Coyote