By Don Kenton Henry

 

So you thought you’d seen it and heard it all, my friend

And that life ran true without ever a bend

That other’s words were sanctified and you trusted without end

To every orphan, stray, and stranger you shared your home and heart again and again

 

You were not a stone

 

But reality is that perception is often a façade

For what appeared linen walls were often made of brick

And seeing through them, like a lover’s words, was too often a trick

But you listened and you trusted and they kissed and they lied

To your face with insincere flattery and guile

Picking your heart like a pocket all the while

 

So you asked yourself

Why try to hide

It’s a house of mirrors in want of a God

And when once you gave, you now deny

 

And now, time has lined your heart with armor

And your soul is steeled by life’s lessons learned

Never giving into other’s schemes

Or even the most well-meaning of intentions

You proceed with circumspection

Sharing neither your dreams or confessions

Safe but alone

Your former self has become a distant reflection

An island with no connection to a greater, higher thing

 

You’ve become a stone

 

Suitors elevate what they cannot have

Admirers hold you on a pedestal

And your hubris runs amok

And love is always finite and nothing good perpetual

You trust nothing to luck

 

You are safe alone

 

In your mind, you’ve become famous as a sagacious judge of character

You approach romance like a business plan

Trusting nothing to fate

Your reality is manicured

Self-served on a gilded plate

Kismet and serendipity in which you once so much believed―

Which in your poet’s heart once had a home . . .

Have been evicted

 

You’ve become a stone

 

Judgmental words of critics abound but are dismissed with resignation

Their acceptance is not sought

Self-absolution rationalized by denial born of adaptation

from pride’s hammer is what’s wrought

You are pragmatic in the throes of preservation

 

A stone repels all rain and hail

Against the elements it doth prevail

 

You gird your mind with an elevated perception of self-worth

and your loins with the company of co-conspirators in mutual, consensual exploitation

Conspirators for whom you cannot care and therefore by whom you cannot be hurt

To the point your wisdom has become a curse

 

Oh, please do not remain a stone

 

Let the poet man come home

Let him find his heart again

Let him see a world with less sin

Let his resurrection now begin

Permit the poet man not die alone

Permit his poet heart seek not to roam

Forsake the persona jaded by years of infidelity of others

And his own

 

Oh, please poet man do not remain a stone

 

Call poetry and love and fate

And tell them to come home

Let them find a way down a friendly road to an open gate

Where once more the poet man trusts each

Where love owns the mortgage on a heart that lust once leased

And where that heart heeds the call of what your soul doth preach

 

Hearken to your poet heart o’ poet man

Come home

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