Aphelion Issue 301, Volume 28
December 2024 / January 2025
 
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Goes Around, Comes Around

by Jan Logsdon


Are you the judge, that settled the grudge
Twixt me and my back shot brother?
He who stole a kiss, and raped my miss
When I could love no other?
Did I see you smile at my trial,
At my hanging and that of another?

Are you that queen, that came between
Her son and his little dancer?
Who wanted her head, took her babe instead,
With slavery the final answer.
Do you dread, memories in your head
Revenge, your spirit’s cancer?

Are you the slave, with the mulatto babe
Who was rejected by her lover?
Did you pine and refuse to dine
When he loved and married another?
When you died, babe at your side,
The baby for want of her mother?

Were you perhaps, an Egyptian chap
Who sacrificed the acolyte?
Were the tables turned, and were you burned
In the following Aztec life?
Is it our destinies, to be enemies
For motives ever so trite?

Must we ever yearn, will we never learn
To simply enjoy what is?
Will our hurts be eased, or never be pleased
For as many lives as we live?
Maybe it is all a dream, rowing life’s stream
Until we can say no to the quiz.

Do I know you? Do I owe you?
What have you to say?
It’s not so little, this jot and tittle
I am told that I must pay.
Or do you know me, do you owe me?
And is this our payment day?


© 2005, 2007 Jan Logsdon

During his life Jan Logsdon has met certain challenges which generated a desire in him to question his beliefs. Ergo, spiritual search. What he found caused him to write in a fictional format to learn how it fit or conflicted with beliefs he held from various sources. At the time he derived certain satisfactions. In that context he has already received all the benefit from them he desired. However, now he desires to learn if it would mean anything to anyone else. The poem, rhyme rather, he submitted is a synopsis of some of what he learned. He hopes you will find it entertaining.

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