These are the days of my disbelief
The old ways have not quite departed
and the new are just out of reach
This unbelieving is worse than death
eating away all that is good
sapping my strength
leaving frustration
and discontent in its wake

Is it an enemy to be conquered?
or a prisoner to release?
I know not from where it comes
nor where it wants to go

Illusive
slipping through the web
of another reality
keeping the next state
of consciousness at bay

Forever just out of reach
In sight yet ethereal
felt yet untouchable
formed yet unborn
an entity in its own right

The suddenly I knew
that feeling so old yet so new
bringing pain in such arrays
of exemplary anticipation
It's name?
Betrayal

Betrayed again
My trust has lost its elasticity
The jolt, the shock
seem less severe
or is it just that I have grown
numb to the repeated pain?

They justify their obscenities
to live their lies in serenity
Just pretty words, a little phrase
lacking meaning, another passing phase

A love in every port perhaps
at every evening stop
and she
never knowing of her double
still believes in authenticity
of what no longer lives

Yet a vague uneasiness persists
pushed aside as imagined slight
but it will only be pushed
just so many times
returning stronger with each incident
until finally the realization dawns:
Betrayal

It spreads to the ends of the universe
intense, the greatest pain of all
mistrust
seeping into every interlude
tainting each relationship

Despising others
as much as themselves
betrayed as well
by their own judgment
the very love
of the child in their heart

Every loving deed performed
becomes a thorn of usury
The innocence is dying
smothered in gross inequity
used yet once again

Betrayed with lies
lost within the twist
and turn of labyrinthine depths
in a darkness of the soul
Betrayed from every angle
no recess left untouched

It eats at me from the center
gnawing with sharp, spiked teeth
like a rat in darkness
causing hunger never satisfied

Betrayed by the mate of my soul
a searing agony
a scream as if of death
yet still the gnawing teeth
rip my inner world to shreds
as the moat of lies is built
without a bridge of love
to span the ever widening gap
between two hearts

Must treachery of usury
accompany each familiarity?
to descend in wisps through nighttime sky
eclipsing even starbeams
darkening all light

One blames the other
the other blames one
yet it begins and ends with family

The first feeling of cold
after the warmth of the womb
The first misstep uncaught
The first hunger left unsatisfied
Are not these our first betrayals?

Unseen murderers
of a love born innocent and pure
Yet how else to rend
the shackles of dependency?
Must the separation once begun
become entire?

It's cold at night on icy shores
waiting for the truth to come
to span the gap of isolation
that summer sun may shine again
binding feeling forever with words
that truth may stand
until none need ever
be betrayed again . . .

?Michaelette?