Colin Mitchell Williams Poet Free verse

The Loving Guilty

The Loving Guilty


Make this choice
End up making another choice
And still feel guilty
About the two

Guilt exists no matter what we do

For the compassionate
Guilt 
Is a multi edged knife

No one leads a guiltless life

Faced with decision
Some other outcome
Always is 
For someone
A cause of guilt

And we can be guilty
Of not wanting to lead
Or facing the guilt
Of a guilty life

To do one course of action it seems we must
It is impossible to choose
None
For no action has its own reaction
In guilt

All life is guilty
Of making a choice
Between foreseen and unforeseen consequence
Leave one in sorrow
Leave one in happiness
Live one in sorrow
Live one in happiness
Both have their hands tightly clenched
On guilt

Guilt is a wish for perfection
For a perfect solution
Amidst the imperfect forces of choices
We are confronted with

Guilt can be seen in a life un-lived
Or a wasted life that gave up on love
It can be a life so scandalously lived
Or one that fed too much on love

And guilt is the dungeon of every dream
Guilt is the squandered wishing-wells penny

With too much compassion
Your heart can freeze 
And then
Guilty
For never having lived
At all

Guilt is a poor appeasement of conscience
That leaves you immobile
Make this choice
End up making another choice
And still feel guilty
About the two

Guilt exists no matter what we do

It is perhaps a great tribute to mankind
That it has to choose between loving 
Made guilty
By the necessity of choice

There is no perfect solution
And someone is always going to get hurt

What do we do, what do we choose
Between guilt’s

This course of least resistance

Guilty then
For not having followed
Your heart

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L'Nass Shango May 26, 2009 at 1:53 PM Cry your heart out, son ... and blame the irresistible need not the choice ... for come to think we never chose under the dictatorship of the passion ... grace is the only distance I have when I chose ... but then I must be prepared to lose the world ... you see my plight ... the world has your poetry. Bravo.

Charmaine Chircop May 25, 2009 at 3:08 PM this goes to my favs,every verse speaks on its own,my fav verse-guilt is a wish to perfection and last stanzaguilty then for not having followed your heart--guilty---charma

Carolyn Devonshire May 25, 2009 at 12:48 PM Lot of truth here, Colin. We sometimes agonize over making choices because there is none that will not generate guilt in some fashion. But you are so right about the intense guilt that comes when we fail to follow our hearts. Today's slogan should be: "Guilt; live with it!" Great poem, love, carolyn

Brandy Megens May 25, 2009 at 10:48 AM if lofe were that easy we would not want to live in the now we are constantly confronted with choices that make us feel guilty one way or another but this why we are human so we can endure this pain of not knowing and doing the wrong thing someone will always get hurt no matter what you need to protect yourself in the end my brother