Linda M. Crate- Three Poems

the foolish king

i won't kiss your feet
not after you
kicked me,
and you can stop acting like
you're a saint in your
imaginary throne;
no matter what anyone does it will never
be enough to please you
for you are a cruel and foolish king
tearing hearts apart in a lust
you mistake for
love—
i only could be myself,
but that wasn't good enough for you
always trying to make me
something i wasn't
to fit some sordid fantasy;
you are false and insincere and the only
thing you know are charm and wit
but in the end being kind
is more important than being right—
you could never be kind
so i will show you
the bitterness of an angry ocean that erodes
just as you threw my heart into the
salted agony of rocks,
and i know two wrongs don't make a
right;
but the idea of you receiving your karma
makes me fall in love with the idea
we're not together
anymore.


the angry raven psalm

i don't know
why
you're so egotistical
because you
are no adonis
just a foolish man that my heart
fell for,
and i loved you with all of me
simply so you could
push me aside and chastise me for
everything i was;
the more i loved you it seemed the
more you hated me—
you always locked the garden gate
kept me outside waiting
insisted one day
we would be together forever
i believed you,
but it was just another lie
of the insincere knave to the dreamer;
you were always good at being
charming but charisma
wasn't going to save me maybe that's why
you insisted upon setting me free—
ravens are meant to fly
anyway
not sing in gilded cages,
and so i will never sing to you again of love
only fury, wrath, and the revenge of
the universe.


a love unrequited

i guess i never needed you
you were just another
fool
trying to shake me from my
dreams,
and you always spit on the face
of my love;
i really truly did care for you
a lot,
but i guess that was my mistake because
you never loved me
in the least—
dreamers sometimes falter with the best of
them
perhaps you were just some
drunken hallucination
of what i thought love should be,
and when i stumbled into your arms you didn't
disagree the idea of love;
simply so you could get me to stay
laying in the
sunshine of your golden hair and ivory
winter arms—
but you were never love only lust and you shattered
my pretty little red heart in two
one day i hope love
shatters you.