Leigh (Alien Auto-De-Fé)

Polar as an electron, you sit
frozen in a time I have forgotten.
Smiling, that cloying smirk,
irritating like insomnia.
You were always there, waiting,
smiling.

You bask in an enveloping glory that
needed no hostile take-overs or scandals
but the essence of something else you possess.
Enemy of friend, you seemed so
rigid, so impossibly needed like gravity,
volume.

Our stiochemetry is ideal, straightforward
enough, dear. A one-to-one basis.
Your choice of career did surprise me.
Miss Medicine girl, healer of the sick.
Fancy yourself as a little Jesus? Raising
the ungrateful dead from a self-inflicted
sleep.

Wretched vixen, twitching your golden
whiskers in my direction. Six
long years and I still feel under
your shadow, under your spell.

To think of you, a doctor?
How strange! Your cool head seemed
so business like, so stiff upper lip.
The British standing ovation, a modern
business Boedicia.

Perhaps, I am drawing too much
from an opinion. Medicine helps life;
that odd little quirk I cannot define
or differentiate. It is a better thing,
I suppose, for the greater good, whatever
that means.

I wonder, sometimes, just exactly how
much of a match am I? Beyond the
weird army of neophytes, are you
my parallel self? Is it merely class
and beauty that keeps us separate?

That radiant head must hide secrets
from terrestrial view. Stained glass mask
I can barely see the edges of it.
Take it off, rip the tiresome grin off.
Dispose of the robes, you are no goddess.

Maybe you are, a new Minerva.
Grace, you are drunk with grace. Sinner,
my god, you are obviously. I can sense
that in my old, weary bones.

Charity for your own benefit would be
best left as drink money for all the good
it does for your soul. I may be under
the radar but I can say I have
suffered,

have you?