Thank you to Mark Antony Rossi of Ariel Chart for publishing my poem today.

If I Would Have Known

  

If I would have known:

 what deserved attention,

and what was nothing more than

that which didn’t matter.

 that diverse illusions

hung upon 100 columns,

and an outbreak of fancy visions

were ramped up upon the face of many hills.

 that a pretender on a throne

could be abetted by priests

with kindred ambition

and similar creed.

 that the restraints of men

are short-term tasks imposed,

and that there is a hell

that does not last forever.