Paul Martin | + Follow Poet |
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No Casual Strangers Allowed

There she was sitting beneath a decaying     
Magnolia tree,   
Whistling the lamentations of the discontented,     
Absent mindedly flicking empty beer bottles into a arsenic pool,   
Hiding her soul from the pestilant sun   
And the bitter hope of yet another false dawn,   
    
I knelt beside her beneath the poc-marked     
Black boughs.   
And watched the ripples dying a painful death upon the stagnant water   
So skillfully posioned by man's skeletal hand   
    
    
I pleaded     
" this is no place for one so young who has the privilege of time dancing at their feet.   
These dung hills this poisoned land of wishful thinking and demented dreams     
Is only for lost causes, disappointed truth seekers and the battle weary who fought the world,   
Who spend their days taking obscure roads     
To pointless destinations.   
You must return to paths narrow and straight,   
Where bitter words shrivel and wither beneath the radiance of a fulsome moon"   
    
She wants to speak but I say,   
"Please don't tell me your ills my wisdom is     
As deep as that toxic pool.   
There is no cure no hidden medicine upon     
This parasitic breeze"   
  
But she weeps,   
"Why can't they leave me be to my rhyming     
And my poetry,     
I was obedient you see believed all the lies   
They told me never realised they're reducing     
My life to office cubicle mediocrity     
And now they want more,     
Body beautiful is what they say, a perfect life with white shiny teeth,"   
    
    
I sigh " the world is what the world is they     
Will never be satisfied "   
    
I take her gently by the hand and lead her back  
To the mist that  poets and madmen cannot   
Pass   
  
I kiss her on the cheek and hand her a tattered copy of Yeats 'The land the Heart's     
desires '   
I whisper "your  pasture will be greener     
Your sky the deepest blue and you will bathe in crystal clear springs of the mind,     
Your soul is for you alone"   
    
As she vanishes into a haze I hope she gone forever and never returns to this empty God forsaken land.

Copyright © Paul Martin | Year Posted 2016

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Connie Marcum Wong Date: 5/8/2016 3:51:00 PM A warm welcome to Poetry Soup Paul. It is refreshing to read a poem with such substance as this. I enjoyed every word from beginning to end. I will return to read more of your work. #7 Aloha, Connie Login to Reply Paul Martin Date: 5/9/2016 11:23:00 PM Thanks Connie for reading And commenting, glad you Like this piece took a while ro put together Much appreciated