An Agreement With God Poem by r james sterzinger

I
understand betrayal
the kept
hands down
of a lover at her side
a embrace dead
never returned.

this writer's words
erased, edited
away by someone
who I thought was a friend.
who didn't understand
my toil
or how it would kill my confidence
(business is more important than art.)


that I would have to
spend Sundays in back of church
praying to a God who seems
to busy spinning his world
to remember me
drowning alone and desperate.
(my God my God
why hast thou forsaken me?)

I buried
a child a parent and a wife
all before I was forty
I have been locked in the madhouse twice
now I stupidly compose verse
while my heart howls at the waning moon...
the credits of a movie based
on a W. Somerset Maugham novel rolling up behind me
like the grave.
(I suppose if I end up in hell would it be a surprise!)