A reflection following one of many times I’ve been defrauded. Sucker for punishment…

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Ode to Failure

 

 

Oh Night, my pleasure and my fear

I draw you close like death to me

For you in your deep earnest cloth

Are close to death as I might hope to be.

 

I loved once life and friends and dreams

And courted pleasure, moment's sweet allure,

When fancy futures were light games to play

Today the only time I dared assure.

And now I choke McCartney's yester words

With flames so near and all I love in pain

With little air, so many wounds to heal

And never in this life to blot the stain.

 

Confusion wracks my analysing mind

As now I lust for vengeance and reprieve

Or self-indulgent passive paranoia -

No, now I cry for peace and time to grieve.

 

Through this war my precious family strained

We two were one have stood for long apart,

Yet strength of love seems winning this crusade

The quest itself a victim of the heart.

 

I love my family all, and all my friends

In truth I strove for all to win the world.

How can I now confess my innocence -

The world I knew was never there at all.

 

 

Michael Reid

11 October 1990

 

©️Michael Geoffrey Reid 1990, all rights reserved.