“Illicit Unattainable Love”

So it’s Friday the 13th again. Well, as I was saying once before, poetry does go well with Friday the 13th. Today’s prompt for NaPoWriMo was to write a ghazal; I’ve written an approximation of a ghazal once before, for last year’s NaPoWriMo. I was hoping this year’s experiment would turn out better, but I’m afraid it probably turned out much worse. Oh, well… Anyway, Wikipedia tells us that a favourite theme for the ghazal-writers is illicit unattainable love which sounded so delicious to me that I went for it. Of course. The theme probably also explains why the poem turned out so bad. Of course.

At the Garden Gates

I had hoped for a word from you to bring us together,
A word given freely, from your lips to mine – in oath together.

But I have rummaged through your thoughts of us – they have no echo –
It burdens me; only loneliness brings us together.

I was praying for you to the goddess of promises
When I saw you and her, arm in arm, happy together.

Prophets sing with their hearts laid out bare at the garden gates,
They cry out for need, for hungering need, all together.

The garden is barren, but for a poisonous flower
Yet the prophets don’t mind, as they are, huddled together.

At the break of morning all the songs sound much, much sweeter,
Mingling in frenzy, refreshed, unstoppable together.