Two Poems
Payment Due
He only wanted to be forgotten, he
put on mask after mask seeking
the anonymity that celebrity denied.
There he was satanic, freely condemned
for thoughts he shared that grated
on their sense of self-worth, their egos,
and here almost angelic, if not to be
trusted, no one knowing which he was real
and which a carefully crafted veneer.
Still he found neither solace nor solitude,
forever imprisoned by their desire that he
conform to their needs, that he become
what they had never been able to attain.
They wanted to write his script, he only
wished to be a mime, forcing them to see
the person he was, not the avatar they created.
He had ascended the mountain of success
languished undeservedly on its peak,
only to discover that the path back down
presented obstacles at every turn, and he
ceased to belong to himself, had to belong
to everyone else who might claim him.
He had courted the fame he achieved,
truly a devil’s bargain he now realized,
and alone, deep in the night, he knew this
was how the devil would exact his payment
as his soul slowly withered into dust.
When
When I finally found you,
when I finally knelt at your grave,
when I finally said hello,
when I finally said goodbye,
when I finally touched the ground
in which you are buried
on the hillside across the river
from the city where you were born,
a Jewish girl in West Virginia
not long removed from Lithuania,
when I said my farewell that morning
knowing I might never return,
I did not mourn you for I had
mourned the loss of you
in some way from the moment
I knew I was adopted, for
that was when I began
to mourn the mother I wouldn't meet
until that cool West Virginia morning.
About the Poet:
Louis Faber is a poet, photographer and blogger living in Florida with his wife and cat (his editor). His work has appeared in Literary Odyssey (India), The Poet (U.K.), Alchemy Spoon, New Feathers Anthology, Dreich (Scotland), Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Erothanatos (Greece), Defenestration, Atlanta Review, Glimpse, Rattle, Cold Mountain Review, Eureka Literary Magazine, Borderlands: the Texas Poetry Review, Midnight Mind, Pearl, Midstream, European Judaism, The South Carolina Review and Worcester Review, among others, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. A book of poetry, The Right to Depart, was published by Plain View Press. He can be found at https://anoldwriter.com.