Of Love

On 2020010120200528 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems19 Comments

Well –

Of love much has been said,

That it can save us, change our fate —

As each, we know the law of love:

In groups,

We feel

The rule

Of hate

(“Of Love” – 12-8-2014)

The Hated One

On 2019032620190326 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems1 Comment

Consider me, the hated one

The foe that you unceasingly must vanquish

Constructed out of stories half-heard long ago
And many what-you-read-somewheres
Defended only by the ineffectual and immoral —

I, and my people, stand accused
Convicted
Sentenced

Of many things, but most frequently,
Of hating

You gorge yourself almost daily on
Your tribal diet of diatribes
Against the likes of me

But you have had personal experience of my kind, you say:
I disagreed with you
I live differently
And expect you to allow me to continue to do so;
This you cannot, will not do

Because this is how it is:
In your quiet life, you have known humility;
To struggle, to fail, to get back up —
But in the life of me and my people
There is always superiority on your side

You *just know* I’m wrong —

That I think what we think,
That I live how we live
Is a manifest sign of my lovelessness:
For the sheer effrontery we indulge in everyday
In not thinking of you
First

Yet, you do not know me –
You burn straw men and straw women every day,
And call them me

And when you can, you burn the real me

But, because you love your own,
You cannot be loveless;
Because you do not know me or mine,
You say we are

I know these words will not assuage you,
You will not think they apply to you —

And you will never know that what you cannot forgive
Is not our differences

But what is alike between us

So
I will continue always to be,

Your hated one

A Hate Poem

On 2015090520150905 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems2 Comments

(I figured there should be some redress on this blog for the overwhelming preponderance of love poems. – Owen)

My mother said, “Do not give into hate.”
Or maybe that was Yoda. I don’t know.
It seems such good advice, at any rate:
But I’m about to break it, even so.

I hate the way I miss you now you’re gone.
I hate that I don’t feel you in the night;
I hate the sullen emptiness of dawn,
But know that this much hating isn’t right.

For all this hate, it’s gnawing at me somehow –
As one whose dying from the inside out;
I hate how much I’m hurting over love now,
But hate
Is all I’m left
To think about

mores et pauperem

On 2015082020150820 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems1 Comment

the angels
pure
serene
and doing good
to those who who can give back nothing

the demons
clouded
torturing
and devouring
those too weak to resist

so both blessed and cursed
are the poor
the meek
the powerless

as they
and only they

can truly discern
the demons
from
the angels

from bitter
experience