Tricked!

Edit [Moderator]: Moved from Poetry to Original Writing.

Tricked!

There was a time,
where I saw this gentle man behind your eyes.
A man that longed desperately
to seek the hurt and help the hopeless.
Your bright eyes burned with passion,
passion to beat yesterday,
to squeeze from today
and to conquer tomorrow;
or so I thought.

You stood there, with childlike eyes,
The determination of a bull
and drive of a jet engine,
asking for my help.
Knowing and naive enough,
clearly able to see the huge mountain of potential
and the rocky path that you had climbed thus far
I stepped into your smokescreen, manufactured reality
Like a missionary in a third world country.
I hoped on board,
strapped myself in and agreed to be a co-pilot,
knowing I had flown in these lands
and was familiar with the journey.

I quickly learned what the puffiness around you're eyes meant
and that the fire behind them was not passion,
but a burning contempt
that stemmed from your reflection
and spilled on those you see.
I learned late,
that the urgency in your step
was a race to a dark ally
with a street punk that cheats.
Your quickness was fueled by one thing;
retaliation.
I learned that no one was exempt
from your "must pay" mantra
that ensured your own private justice
on all those around you,
for crimes you imagined
because you had been once held accountable for your own.

I was wrong about your gentility,
confusing it with eternal condemnation of those you own.
I was mystified to learn that your passion for tomorrow
came at a clear price payable to you
and a verdict that everyone but you
would pay.
I misunderstood your cry for help
with the quiet strategy to possess me,
as you own the other souls that you have trapped
with the imminent belittlement
and renegotiated price
for their livelihood.
I misread the signs,
those carefully placed 20 hour day subtleties,
the "almost" apologies
and softly rubbed shoulders
after a tough day in your storm,
with a human fiber or even the correct spelling of the word love.

In fact,
You intentionally weaved a careful thread
of imaginary hope,
reinforcing the insanity you live by,
that tomorrow you will be different to us.
Tomorrow, you will recognize just one of us as a human.
I fell for the plot
to use your rugged past as a weapon of empathy,
when it was truly 13 years of plotting eternal revenge on the world,
because you hated having been caught
at your own game
that our world calls illegal
and you just call your share.
I failed to understand how you see the world around you.
In your mind,
you are the ultimate judge,
you are the jury
and you now have the power they stripped you of for 13 years
that you have killed to keep.

We are both sleepless at night,
yet for such differing reasons.

Me, trying to understand how to fix
That new last straw that you insist we take today
on our broken, chained backs.
I lay awake,
wondering where my super powers went
that imagined having the abilities
to pull the red eyed demon out of you
and paint a picture of a man on an island,
reaping the rewards of true hard work,
with your partner that finally deserves some ******* thanks.

You, wondering which new weapon
will find a piece of our flesh
you've yet to cut open
and how to leave us to bleed today
as a silent reminder of your power
to enslave.
You lay awake,
asking if today will be the day you are found out,
you are discovered as your own worst nightmare
to confirm what you see in that mirror of loathing
that you are a failure
as you always suspected.

So we both lay awake at night wondering.
But no sleep will come to either of us.
Not so long as you are the master of this horrible puppet show
that robs real people of their light.
And not so long as I
continue to let you look at mine.
We may go sleepless comparably
But we are not alike at all
And you saw that from the beginning
You hated the fact that I was not for sale
Only for rent.

We are complete opposites
And you have no idea how lucky you are
That this is the case.

I wish I could be the person I used to be
The blood-sucking bitch
that would tell you what I really think
About the way you treat your lover
The way you abuse people in ways that are irreversible
The way that you used her son's love for his mother
To keep him quiet and submissive
To make sure she had no life preserver left
About how you robbed him of his light and his ability to see
And how you have slowly starved the people that trusted you
Like Ethiopians in the desert
You dangle water above their heads weekly
And force them to dance with their last ounce of strength.

You are lucky that I am not that person anymore.
I would kick you hard enough
For you to taste the pavement
That you must have talked or sucked your way out of eating
In prison.
I would wait for you gasp for air
Choking on your own blood of carelessness
And I would place a small piece of tape
over your mouth
That ensured you were only allowed to hear
your own screams.
I would let flies feed on your body
And place a mirror in front of you
So you could watch yourself
decay slowly
as your army has
As you have done to the ones you say you love
To the ones you called family
To the ones you tricked with promises of gold
And to the ones you begged for help
And slowly deprived them of life.
Because you were so riddled with envy
That they had peace you will never know
So you stole it from them
One day at a time.

I would tell you that those words your father told you
The ones that you insist we pay for daily
Were all true
And that you have no idea what the word MAN means
Or what LOVE looks like
Or what FRIENDS give and don't give
And what a BOSS is allowed to take

I would then pray
that you get to leave this miserable existence
where your cannibalistic approach to your own shame
of the mistakes you made
yet insist we pay penance for
is finally an abandoned battlefield.
I would pray that you get another Mormon chance
To come back human this time
And hope
That if you ended up on this side of hate
That this time they keep you in that 10 X 10 cell
Where you cant hurt anyone
Anymore.

I would grab the keys to the cells you have us locked in
And free what is left of those that followed you
to the bitter end
I would bury the dead and cherish the memory
Of the kind hearted
And hard working
that perished in your reign.

I would feed them water and wine
And we would dance
on your ashes
Roasting marsh-mellows in the bonfire
Of your counterfeit life.
We would burn the thousands of fake papers you called a business
That carefully disguised your war on people
And I would begin a ceremonial chant
That says what we've all wanted to say for so long
And we would find the things you stole from everyone you ever met
And return it to them.

So since I am not that girl anymore
I'll have to hold my head high
Maintain my dignity
Politely refuse to decompose my dreams for you
anymore
And tell you

I resign, and I want my last paycheck.