I reap the rotten harvest

of my fake holiness


how much I wanted to

attend the suffering


how much harm I did

in my vain instruction


personal salvation

was all I really wanted


hiding behind the instruction

that we each are responsible for ourselves


and those in hardship or dislocation

seeing only my own turned back


the final realization to dispirit me

that I embody the conceited tyrant


with a heart like flint

and no grace to transmute it


I myself a tyrant

I myself to a slave to my failures...



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