No Good Deed

Invocation:
I call those who have gone before
Mothers, Goddesses, of earth and lore
Give me strength to hold this grail
Against the fallen, broken male

*******************

No good deed
Why won’t you heed
Me when I tell you
Your view
Is skewed
I watched you fall from grace
A hundred times
Till I saw rhymes
Sheer poetry in your failure

Dramatized in tabloid style
Hypnotized
I just smiled at everything I heard about you
Because I knew it was true
And something in your broken face
Was something so common place in my own heart
So that every time you fell apart, I felt the blow
Don’t tell me I don’t know

When it was my turn to learn
You epitomized the teacher
I hated to love
Because
Tough Love
Was all you taught
But I thought,
Hey, a promise is a promise

I’d elicited your word
Illicit as it was
And it occurred to me
To swear my own oath
Blood for blood and troth for troth

“I’ll be here and I’ll be true
But do me wrong and die the death
That they all promised you.
Somehow, you’ve stayed alive
But cross me, and don’t expect to.”

A threat, I know, but in the end
I let you live
Agape, not death, I chose to give
And blessed you with the help I could
Forgot to listen to that last lesson

No good deed goes unpunished
All helpful urges should be circumvented

In four short days you clearly forgot
All the words I dearly treasured
Or at least
Transferred ownership without
Letting me sign away the deed
Why didn’t you heed
Me when I told you
Your view
Was skewed

So you left me
Bereft me
Of nothing but inflated pride and few smiles
Her wiles beguiled you
And just plain fucked me over
But that’s okay ‘cause pain means gain
And all sorts of hackneyed shit
So…I’m a bit peeved…
But she’s big sister and friend both
And I’d taken the solemn oath
To hurt you only if you did me wrong
But nothing’s wrong with falling in love

With no good intention
Above being decent
I let it go

Until…recent-ly…
I realized that in your eyes
There were no allies
Weaker than me.
Okay, so I’m no wonder
But I wonder where my oath was torn asunder
Did I, or did I not say that I would help
In anyway, so long as you were true?
So I meant in bed, but can’t you be like any other guy
And reapply it where you think you need it most?
I don’t mean to boast, but
You’ve needed my aide.
What are we, in grade school?
It’s over, but I promised
I don’t go back on that

Against my better judgment, I stuck it through
Put my neck out even when you refused
To acknowledge me
I thought I’d be damned if I let anyone walk on my toes
But who knows

And when she ran in crying
I knew the candle I’d held for you was dying
‘Cause you weren’t true
That last thing I’d expected to do
Was call her big and give her love
‘Cause that was your job

Infidelity robbed you of your last hope
We aren’t dopes
And we fight back
With hearts of blackened icy wrath
We took to the path I’d closed before
And some string in my heart tore
With the weight put upon it
But I couldn’t wait to face you

And when I did, I saw your eyes
Glowing with the knowing
That Eve gifted Adam in Eden
You know what you’ve done
You know that we’ve won
We get to hate you now
And fate you to the death you deserved
So many days and months and years before
When you made your first whore
Of a girl who’d been an angel
Before your angle made her hurl

And when you knew, you let me know
That you’d already accepted our claim
The punishment wouldn’t matter
By bludgeon to maim
Or quartered and drawn
Or shot on the lawn
Or driven mad by taunting
I can’t stand the thought of your eyes haunting me
As big and brown and dim
As Ol’Yeller’s before Jim shot him
As vacant as my head when I said yes
But not dead…no, you weren’t dead…
You just knew
You’d screwed yourself

I owe you a death of vile proportion
But the bile in my stomach
And the ache in my heart
Won’t let me start
Because something in your broken face
Was something so common place in my own heart
So that when you fell apart, I felt the blow
Don’t tell me I don’t know

No good deed goes unpunished
No act of charity goes unresented

If I spare you, I’ll never win
Because you’ll spin it back to me
And then I’ll see how bad it is for both of us
To walk the easier path
Where love doesn’t mean wrath

And if I hurt you, I’ll always lose
Because I chose to care
I dared
And unlike you and your version of it
Love doesn’t die, cause there’s nothing above it

No good deed goes unpunished
No act of charity goes unresented
No good deed goes unpunished
That's my new creed
My road of good intentions
Led where such roads always lead
No good deed
Goes unpunished!