Temptation Poem by Ezio Olubelleau

I've come to know temptation as a quiet, cutting thing,
An axe with edges sharpened by the pull of wanting;
For what small taste of smoke could ever make me stray,
Step barefoot into mud and give my caution away,
My white robe hanging loose like some forgotten offering—
If not temptation, what else could be more haunting.

And it's never been the spear a man forgets to raise,
But the cruel deceit behind the devil's gaze;
We fail to see the shimmer hidden in his plea,
The gentle tilt of night that once reached out to me,
A moment dressed in shadows, slipping through golden haze—
A truth I learned too late, in all my younger days.

The night ain't better—cruel, unmoved by any will I keep,
It stirs the quiet ghosts I thought were once buried deep;
Once before I stared at my cushion's edge and wondered,
Then held my shaking hands as whispers pressed and thundered—
No necromancer I, yet ghostly still my name would creep,
Returning to my tongue like something half‑asleep.

My neighbor tried an exorcism once, in honest fear,
Her priest weighed out my will as though it faltered here;
But every omen scattered when they tried to bind,
Their candles bowed like branches in a troubled wind,
For what they sought to banish wasn't dark but fear—
Or something in myself I hadn't learned to hear.