The poet's betrayal - a poem by Chris Zachariou

A Lunar Chameleon Dance

I trekked this path before

the scent is too familiar—

it is the scent of tarnished oaths.

The rusty ring she wears

pollutes the water in the well

and the poplars in her street

whisper in a foreign tongue.

The aspiring would-be poet

hides in a spider's silver web

with a blushing unicorn
she has held to ransom since

the day she became a woman.

Her universe was once

a green reflection until a songsmith

dropped a pebble in the well

and her Camelot existence rippled
into nothing.

In a montage of unrestrained pleasures

they watch a cherry red chameleon

crawling on the hard breasts of the moon

and masturbate to the rhythm

of an old song she now claims her own.

A wistful minstrel, drowning in a vortex

   of green light

recites to her poems of deviant pleasures

"don't ever close your eyes, darling"

but the foolish girl imagines

the unicorn is now her new lover
yet she knows she only felt alive

when she raged at the troubadour
from beyond the seething lake.