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Arachne: A Literary Journal. No. 1

Louis Johnson

Louis Johnson

page 15

Some Held To Love By Hate

Pity drives some to madness, but not she
Whose madness, beyond pitiable, glares
Maddening from the crux of blind conceits
Taking time by the throat, demanding, sears

Love galled and helpless in her clutch.
But pity we who holds her, beyond calm
Or any expectation to be free
Since her erratic glance predicates harm;

Pinions to madness who would hold her sane.
I would not hold her, but may not relax
The bonds that hold my hands that held her hand
Believing, in brief innocence, love makes

Low high, and heaven nearer with a band
Sure as deliverance of the oppressed. It's clear
The oppressed suffer in innocence, and pity
Drives some to madness, while the fear

Of suffering loss of madness keeps some able
To suffer the lateral thorns of grief and thrive
Poised dangerously between the knives and murders
Such as her eyes prove, in whose fear I live.

Dear Doctor D'ath

No-one believes the diagnosis,
Heeds the doctor when he says
"There is a limit to your motions
And a restraint upon your days."

Others were told the same thing often
And lived to suffer aged disgrace,
Coddling the light with hands that soften,
Look life no longer in the face.

Others meet death, but not the one
Who day by day draws daily near
The moment when his will is done,
The time of his torpescent fear.

Others have not been brave about it,
Not ignored warnings, or resumed
The deeds their destinies propounded,
But idle, wasted, were consumed.

page 16

No-one believes the rare occasion
Hastens to claim with each brief act,
That the finale and the curtain
Falls on the disbelieved-in fact.

Or that what happens to another
Will in his instance same apply;
Buries his fear inside to smother,
Offers his life to make death lie.