Illusions and Delusions

On this week's topic:

Illusions and Delusions

And heaven was just a story
In her head
Ghost written by parents
Now long dead
Who wanted the best for their
Little girl
So they told her tales of
Everlasting paradise.

Shuffling on tired feet
Panting forwards, they stole
Across dark borderlands
Patrolled and guarded by
Bayonettes and mines
But the hungry don't count
The price of salvation.

They mistook the land of
Bondage and avarice
With the land of dreams
Nightmares wrought into
Flesh
By honeyed streams.

Now she sleeping dreams
On illusions and delusions
And they make her toss and
Turn
As her babies scream.

The road was a satin stretch of fast
moving cars
Each carried a wondrous portentious passenger
And her shrivelled hands stretched out
In empty hope
Perhaps an angel of mercy would notice her!

The illusion of beggar maids and beaten mendicants
Mothering dust bowls of dreams and hapless
broods
At night the stars winked and sinned against
her yet again
Conspicuous conspiracy to fuel her empty dreams.

Illusions and delusions lie dreary at death's doors by day
Hand to mouth and thirsty throaty pleas
These twin gargoyles of deception crouch to kill
By first arousing then dousing hope.

The corpses were carefully removed
one bleary winter's dawn
By municipal workers in masks and gloves
And has she finally reached her hope?
That parental fairy tale of promised paradise?

I do think illusions and delusions may abound in the
ever-after too
Oh what lies beyond the dread glooms of deepest blues?

© Amrita Valan 2015