The Depths of Deception
We live in a world that's fraught with lies,
Deception lurks in every shadow.
Yet even the best cannot realize,
The heart of every person is hollow.
I take a look at those around me,
I see sorrow and despair in their eyes,
The hurt others cause is easy to see,
We live in a world that's fraught with lies.
We lie to family, we lie to friends,
We lie 'til filled with unbearable sorrow.
We lie out of habit, we lie without end,
Deception lurks in every shadow.
Everywhere one looks it is found,
I observe this desolation with sighs,
Signs are everywhere, all around,
Yet even the best cannot realize.
For everyone is guilty, everyone laments,
In a flood of misery we wallow,
The lies inescapable, ever present,
The heart of every person is hollow.
***
This type of poem is called a cascading poem. It primarily revolves around the first stanza. The poem maybe be written with stanzas written either as tercets (three-line stanzas) or quatrains (four-line stanzas). I chose to write using quatrains. The form of the poem then requires that each line from the first stanza be used as the final line for each following stanza. To help this make more sense, here is a rhyme scheme:
A
B
C
D
a
b
c
A
d
e
f
B
g
h
i
C
j
k
l
D
The rules for cascade poems do not dictate any other requirements, but I decided to make it a little more interesting for myself by adding the rhyme scheme ABAB into every stanza.
***
The reason I chose to write about this topic is because I have been deceived quite often by friends and other people, and just today someone close to me got caught in a web of lies they'd been weaving for quite some time. Although I realize that not everyone in the world is caught in a similar trap, I know deception is a worldwide epidemic, whether it be large or minute. I just wish that people would more often think about the words that are coming out of their mouth and realize the hurt they could cause before they actually say them. So much pain could be avoided in today's world if people were to think before they speak. Sometimes the problem isn't speaking, but rather not speaking, keeping something a secret that you really should tell someone about, and this is just as bad as speaking a lie. No matter how you lie, someone is hurt.
Yes, I'm guilty of this too, but maybe this poem will help me to second-guess myself next time I want to lie about something, no matter how unimportant it may seem.
No comments:
Post a Comment