The Ninth Commandment

IX.			 	“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house.
				You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,
				nor his male or female slave, nor his ox
				or ass, nor anything else that belongs to him.”

With unobtrusive guile throughout this text
my soul revealed some secrets to my pen,
solemn all the while I  ’d and X’d;        
full knowing that facetiousness will win 
when forced to face my own Nemesis next
in sequence on reverberating sin.

In homage to full truth I must digress
since venialities leave me perplexed.
I’m quite beyond a sober station in 
disposing of impurities indexed.
Let conscience tell this tongue when to begin
to Hyde behind my gentle Jeckyll twin, 
concealing gross defections now and then
until all three-toed spirits have been hexed.

To fill this bill would You have me to speak
with droning monotone to Father’s ear
on bended knees in cloistered  gloom a week?
Could not a private phone, if I’m sincere,
bring absolution; if docile and meek,
and humble to Your will, and of good cheer, 
and with contrition toward Father’s pique? 

If giving all of me to Yahweh’s gospel
(as sages are so prone to emphasize)
rests on the ninth command  .   .  impossible.
Dammerschlaf shuns that much enterprise. 
I can’t begin to cover all I covet
and score myself unfit for paradise.

Bad omen:  crude thoughts that taunt to shove it,
ignoring limbo’s transitory ties:
hell’s flame below, and God’s wrath above it;
suspended state designed so I apprize
my present status quo, if not to love it.
On this tight-rope I fully realize
I tippytoe too slow to test my size;
but why do I, instead of hand-in-glove it,
expose a pose my peers will criticize?

Could I choose hell because easy-does-it,
where wholesomeness of spirit putrefies?
Would I choose well if chose to Druse it,
voicing my views in deism disguise? 
 

The Curator’s Notes: In this extraordinary poem the poet breaks the fourth wall completely, abandons any pretense of pious meditation, and instead writes a brutally honest, darkly humorous confession that she can’t possibly keep the Ninth Commandment (against coveting) and barely wants to try. It’s tonally unlike anything else in the collection; playful, desperate, self-aware, and teetering on the edge of despair. There is no Tenth Commandment poem because this one covers both. She can’t separate coveting wife from coveting goods because she covets everything. The distinction is meaningless when desire is that comprehensive and exhausting. This poem is brutally honest. No pious platitudes, no false victory, no comfortable resolution; just – “I’m failing, I’m tired, maybe damnation is easier, and I don’t know what to do.”