BEDEVILLED BY MY DEMONS

 

You were watching me from elsewhere,

Your quest plainly one pre-planned,

Tried to test my resolution,

When you proffered your hand.

 

A breath-taking temptation,

Yet it never was my plan,

To toy with your affections,

For I was back then a wiser man,

 

Now blessed here in my torment,

A would be libertine,

Bedevilled by my demons,

Enlivened in my dreams.

 

The cross you bare is crooked,

Made of just distorted ply,

No nails, no scope for torture,

No hymns, just lullaby’s.

 

I still think of your offered hand,

Knowing had I grasped it I would die,

In a place you named Shangri-la,

Where you have long since lived out your lie.

 

I am gratified that I ignored you,

That I never took succumbed to brazen bait,

That I never walked your garden path,

Never got beyond your gate.

 

Others will grieve alone one day,

Yet true lovers never lose,

Tangled up in timelessness,

Are the painter and his muse.

 

Your wretched canvass now adorns,

The palace of your knights,

You had a saint awarded you,

One day that saint took flight.

 

You the sacrificial skeleton,

Glad I never knew your kiss,

I sit at no person’s right hand,

You possess nothing that I miss.

 

Still I wander in the wilderness,

A place that consumes me so,

In my frozen adolescence,

Of your memory I can’t let go.