“Don’t criticize what you can’t understand.”
Bob Dylan

ENVY

Mistresses of the sidelong glance, pursed lips and narrowed eyes

their claws out in anticipation.

An interloper will not obey group norms

byzantine to all

but their inbred nucleus.

Heads adjoined, a hydra of bile,

they spew a lethal cocktail of hatred and malice,

a blitzkrieg of pettiness, innuendo and spite

thoroughly and relentlessly as a conqueror razes a city.

They drag her through the noxious sludge of degradation.

Inevitable denouement is ostracism final as ancient Athens,

a surgical cut

until she is laid bare,

her spirit torn to dirty scraps pelted by the wind.

Satisfied, they begin once more.

Open-Minded