12 Betrayal poems

I have met them in dark alleys, limping and one-armed; I have seen them playing cards under a single light-bulb and tried to join in, but they refused me rudely, knowing I would only let them win. I have seen them in the foyers of theaters, coming back late from the interval long after the others have taken their seats, and in deserted shopping malls late at night, peering at things they can never buy, and I have found them wandering in a wood where I too have wandered. This morning I caught one; small and stupid, too slow to get away, it was only a promise I had made to myself once and then forgot, but it screamed and kicked at me and ran to join the others, who looked at me with reproach in their long, sad faces. When I drew near them, they scurried away, even though they will sleep in my yard tonight. I hate them for their ingratitude, I who have kept countless promises, as dead now as Shakespeare’s children. “You bastards,” I scream, “you have to love me—I gave you life!”

It’s now all about money about which poetry rarely reaches transcendence. But love must still fester even under that. Everyone I know frets if poetry can still matter, but what about love? It’s all become too much for them, and they’re all on the soma. It makes sense with these pills when the someone they thought they loved for years by never thinking about it says, “I don’t love you anymore, but let’s stay friends in that mellow woebegone way poetry now sings without singing.” Of course, they’re always asking “What is poetry?” and then answering by saying it’s what Boethius was thinking about when they squished his head until his eyes popped out, or anything barbaric enough to get everyone to stop eating for a bit and reach for a moment past a chatty moment. Sort of a solution to awkward goodbyes. How money becomes a sort of welcome relief that defuses the poetry charging tense moments. “Interesting,” someone remarks between bites, “to be right here in the moment yet also out there watching some once-in-a-lifetime sublimity unfold, as if living as if already dead.” As if standing in a dream far up in the stars somewhere with Scipio