PARASITES OF LUST

by Linda M. Crate

i  laid my soul
naked
and bare before you,
you shrank away
as if i were disgusting; evil
dead flower
weighing down your
rain drops—
i closed inward on myself in
seas of introspection
wondered what was wrong with me?
again i wasn't good enough,
but i couldn't understand why
if God made us all in his image
why would so many
shun away
the intricacies of my mind?
i think the answer lays in that i'm
more complex than i look,
and i'm more than
just that pretty face they fawn over
in photographs;
the fact that i'm a living, breathing
soul with something to say
frightens and bewilders
i only want to change the world in a good way,
but you merely live for sex—
you talk like a scholar, but you are but
a mere instrument of lust
whose strings are pulled taut by
primal desires who in and of themselves are
beautiful; yet the way you abuse them
they become something ugly, evil
causing beauty to fold inward on itself to escape
the parasites of your lust.