"I guess in Gehenna, there are no crowns for virtuous living"

"Think not, Percy,
To share with me in glory anymore.
Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere."
-Henry IV, Part 1

------------/The Other Brother, Not Prodigal: A Speech


I sleep
on pillows of rumors that share with me
salacious stories of squandered
chances reconstituted, willful sacrilege
and deplorable betrayal polished and glorified
before men
The moon that peers down into my windows
gatekeeper for nighttime chills
of disenchanted discontent for dastardly deeds
shivering, but not from the cold, from anger
each star in the sinister sky is an shameful soldier saluting
misdeeds
illumining waywardness to blind the eyes
of those seeking justice
clenching my fists in my hands seething
that the sun never came
.....that the sun never came
(I always yearned for grandiose garnishments
and servants in garish robes sincere
in their salutations. But years pass as I labor in the field
my fear is that my dreams will surreptitiously sneak off
and withered
I'll die a lonely man with no wife
or kin to carry on my sordid heritage
its always the ones closest that hurt you the most
and embody your innermost worries and phobias
that you were
and always will be
unappreciated
the fatted calf slaughtered
the slave not the master: the monotonous moron
wearing patience thin
the man full of malady fasting while others feast
on cruelty
on bitter irony)
prostitutes, and fermented grain like potions
that's what I'd really like
anything to assuage this acerbic atrophying
of my heart – wilting because I did not leave
and bow down to the false gods of loose living
I was always here, dad,
always here
I guess in Gehenna, there are no crowns
for virtuous living


"'My son,' the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours". – Luke 15:28-31