Category Archives: Free Verse

What Do You See?

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We Never Even Noticed

How we solaced in the truths of our elders,
to hold to pristine shibboleths of hollow ground
that all was hallowed in a superstition
of moralised purity,
that we promptly set in stone,
and there we held you in mawkish admiration
so unfounded, somehow projected,
believing that you held us too
because we were so good at our own game
given to saccharine views of life,
there we were, fulminating righteous wrath
against love itself
the very given of nurture,
and we called on your name as talisman
without so much as a fibre of authenticity
preferring indulgent expectation
dressed and redolent in disconnect,
and you, imprisoned in your architrave,
looked on in sorrow and wept
in your powerless state where
our dogmas kept you,
yet you dared to ask from your eyrie
disturbing our common good,
What moved us or
how did we reach into the pain of neighbour?
Indignant silence was
followed by sanctimonious justification.
Your loud shout of anguish rent the air
then a mighty crack
as you effaced in surrendered humility,
recognising our inability to be aware
so selfishly content that
love was adulterated,
poisoned,
defunct,
perpetually crucified,
and we never even noticed.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com