My Greatest Enemy [sonnet]
My loving heart seeks only peaceful means
to make its way through every troubled world;
while bombs and guns blow souls to smithereens
and bullets at small children’s heads are hurled.
I make my trenches deep in flow’ry fields —
those graveyard dreams where only poppies grow;
while all my opiated suff’ring yields
a lifelong minus conflict afterglow.
Yet though from foes my heart is always free
(for even when I’m hated I’ll not spite)
I have to — if I’m honest — disagree
as there is one opponent whom I blight.
Despite the fact that from all war I flee
the greatest enemy I have is me.
© 2011, Alan Morrison
The Naked Troubadour 