By Celia Shaneyfelt

DICHOTOMY – triolet

Explain if you would why you’d make it so
that over my life you’d cast this painful pall.
This life you stuck me with is filled with woe.
Explain if you would, why you’d make it so
impossible for me to ever know
sweet freedom in a love that would enthrall.
Explain if you would why you’d make it so,
that o’er my life you’d cast this painful pall.

DICHOTOMY – a sonnet

Explain if you would why you’d make it so
that o’er my life you’d cast this dreadful pall.
As if changing my soul were apropos
I long for love that my life would enthrall.

My life has been excruciatingly
consumed by chasing after hopeless dreams,
and once it came together seemingly
I find it ripped asunder at the seams.

Why set down rules then make them feel so wrong
(for nature battles strongly to exist)
then make me weak where I need to be strong,
if on their keeping you would then insist.

Is there not some way that I could be free?
I can not live this life you’ve laid for me!

DICHOTOMY– free verse

I looked into your face and what I saw
was cruelty though disguised by words of love.
Yet wrapped in cloak of kindness was a chain
that cut my skin and added to my pain.

”Come reason with me” were the words you said
while driving your knife deep within my soul
and fool, I came to sit before your feet
not understanding that it means defeat.

I listened to the words read from the book
and heard expounded meanings that were strong
and I accepted each thing that was said,
and freely followed where I had been led.

But then the tables turned changing my view;
the things I saw now set my world aflame.
You broke my life by making me this way,
and now I can no longer even pray.