The Poet's Betrayal Poem by Chris Zachariou

I trekked this path before
the scent is too familiar—
it is the scent of tarnished oaths.

The rusty ring she wears
pollutes the water in the well
and the poplars in her street
whisper in a foreign tongue.

The aspiring would-be poet
hides in a spider's silver web
with a blushing unicorn
she has held to ransom since
the day she became a woman.

Her universe was once
a green reflection until a songsmith
dropped a pebble in the well
and her Camelot existence rippled
into nothing.

In a montage of unrestrained pleasures
they watch a cherry red chameleon
crawling on the hard breasts of the moon
and masturbate to the rhythm
of an old song she now claims her own.

A wistful minstrel, drowning in a vortex
of green light
recites to her poems of deviant pleasures

'don't ever close your eyes, darling'

but the foolish girl imagines
the unicorn is now her new lover
yet she knows she only felt alive
when she raged at the troubadour
from beyond the seething lake.