*****

Recorded Reading (2:17): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/pwo6x44lqleul5rs2nmuq/Lost-and-Empty.mp3?rlkey=kltd7hzwst3njzj51vmcnzbcr&dl=0

*****

Lost and Empty

Faced with results of a lifetime of falseness
You find that you can’t turn your vessel around
Without now admitting to lies and unkindness
To treachery and to betrayals profound

Your victim has been well prepared to forgive you
For so many years they have decades become
But that which you point to is not the real issue
The real issue’s how cowardly you’ve become

Unable bear up beneath even the prospect
Of censure might come if you error admit
Then, as others do, simply strive to correct
And reshape your course — we have all gone through it

Except for you sad ones described in the Bible
Continue a thousand more lies then to tell
Increasing, each telling, your level of libel ~
Anything so other liars think well

Of you as desirable, upstanding people
Subscribing all popular prejudice to
Proceeding, as regulated, to the steeple,
To worship only as expected to do

The rest of the time turn stigmatized eyes
To venal and violent wrongdoings of
Acquaintance each moral infraction denies
Ultra-ostentatious examples of love

In its most debased and most compromised form
Of human affection create quid pro quo
Because once decided falseness is your norm
You cannot then ever the truth clearly know,

Can never experience any emotion
Unfettered by thoughts of your self-interest,
Never be lost in the exquisite ocean
Of unselfish wonder feels ever the best,

Nor e’er trust completely another again,
Unless and until to develop you try
A new set of patterns ~ for it’s only then
This world will seem full to your lost, empty eye

*****

This poet presently lives at a fraction of her nation’s poverty level.

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