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LIVE NOT ON EVIL - ©2019 by (((Trevor Patrick)))


In these days where 'forgiveness'
depends upon the number of zeroes on a cheque,
I never thought I'd see the day,
where it's become outmoded and 'quaint'
to be MERELY politically-correct-

-especially since I've now become old enough
to have lost the privilege of being direct,
and contemptuous dismissal
is the mildest treatment I usually hope to expect.

Yeah, not hip enough to be "woke",
but obliged to ponder all the clueless mysteries
of what I (might/might not) have said or done-
Any wonder that the older generations'
alternative to "Mother's Little Helper"
was: "Some day my Prince Valium will come?"

Just like every broken relationship
you rediscover the pieces of on each new futile rotation
not only moved on, but barely even remember you-
but you have no available means to escape your situation...

And the ones that you most WANT to forget?
Well, they're the ones fate decides you NEED to be haunted with-
not merciful enough to offer you clean-slate resolution,
only cancerous thought-malaise - some cosmic wrong to forgive.

And even in unwanted/unasked-for contact
there's almost never any new stories to tell,
She just says: "I stopped blaming you long ago,
so stop wasting time blaming yourself.

And you'd like to say: "Sometimes these shoulders
are much broader than you're aware;
especially when we were brought up to have little other choice
'cause no one else was gonna care."

But still, it's often turned inwards,
and you feel you carry some kind of invisible curse
especially when you try to help someone important to you,
but even your best efforts only made things worse.

And you feel like you're responsible,
like you made some undefinable part of them die,
and your sorrow wears down to blunt, impotent edges,
and it feels too much like bleeding to cry.

And she says: "If that part was even there in the first place,
perhaps it was much smaller than you know,
because whatever it was, that I may have lost,
I can't even remember feeling it go."

And maybe I came to some tired realisation-
some world-winding-down breath of time-corrupted song,
that sometimes forgiveness is more necessary for you
than for they, whom you feel may have done you wrong,

and holding on to all that unresolved hurt
even in steadily age-dimished degree,
was eventually doing nothing
other than draining away far too much energy,

that it was the drop of tar in the barrel of honey,
that was tainting/ruining the ability
to find enjoyment in the few things I still liked/
the few small pleasures I still had available to me.

And like so many other times I was sure I was right,
only to be humbled and humiliated - to be proven dead-wrong
the consequence of every so-called 'wise' choice
exposed as ignorant and foolish,
was to only recognise golden opportunities
when they were already gone.