I don’t know if the laurels I deserve…: A poem 

I don’t know if the laurels I deserve, 

will place me on the apex of Mount Olympus, 

But I see all those olive branches in the float below 

And I keep looking away into some sort of disconnection. 

I have lived in a hope of love and truths, and seen them 

dissembled time again, like mountains being carved out into streets 

so that cities of lies can be built. I am just feeling 

my robustness despite all the imposed enervation!  

What do I call the near and dear, that only seem to work against me! 

Is the aperture in my foresight blinded by treason? 

I look to myself as I perceive a world that is occluded by sin! 

I am not daunted by the roadblocks that want to keep me still! 

Should I think that a compassion should go up in flames 

And I invite the wintry fog of dispassion and aloneness 

That my own beliefs are called out as an insanity 

By those who want the convenience of my resigned disposition 

I have not maintained my allegiances, yet it is so much evil 

that contrapts the devices of my functionality to dysfunctionality 

There is no foreshadow, though, that keeps me from witnessing 

the foreclosure of everything that began with me 

And if not foreclosure, evil manipulation 

I laugh at such villainy; I laugh and am courage!  

Does anybody understand that your imagined freedom is lockjawed? 

Should I incur the loss of right to myself, by making myself 

available to all your misconstrued acquisitions 

I have done a lot of duty for little or no wages 

Should you think the pittances thrown at me, prompt my tortuous obligations? 

I didn’t dillydally with any high and mighty to seek to apple-polish them 

My nobility has always been in my unswerving responsibilities to righteousness 

without submitting to treachery of any kind; so you should know you treacherous villains 

if you have any shame in your embodiments , to display it on your faces and through every orifice of your beings!  

I have not heard oracles yet, but have been vindicated by faith all along! 

As if faith alone can pronounce the livability through all the indignity committed upon me! 

So, should you even think you can get any of my respect 

Or do you even dare to think you can compel me to forgive? 

There is too much vanity among criminals that they deserve impunity or no retribution, but they feel convinced, in fact, tragically, that they deserve their misbegotten victories! 

Shame! Shame!