Broken

 

 

 

Billy is broken more than one can see

with nine sides – each cut into faceless

opposites contorted into lines that entwined

the oddities and the natures of each in a misaligned

narcissistic relationship and with voices of contradicting plea

 

There is Billie, the banshee, whose wailings warn that death nears;

Wiley, the fabricator, has the imagination of Aesop

And tells stories that are necessary to veil the illusionary family;

Willy’s vanity consoles the torments of anomie;

Willis, the abnegator, denies the chimera’s many fears;

 

Wills, the politician, construes the rules of empathy;

Wilson, the eldest of them absorbs all their sins;

while Willie, the youngest, is the sentimental mind

and then, there is William - treacherously unkind

with severe eyes that burn away any sympathy

 

The nine odd lines transect  at the center of the self circle

In entangled trapeze bars sitting at feigned projection points

With each pair of the nine parallel chains consigned to strain at rage

Against each other and yet, each is compromised to exist in one cage

Entrapped by the mirror of Narcissus and the spectre of Virgil.

 

 

“For trust not him that hath once broken faith” -William Shakespeare