Betrayal Is Rarely Righteous, Always Personal

Poets are transgressive

In mostly righteous ways.

People are transgressive

In mostly righteous ways,

Which means being willing

To transgress in the ways

Those most like you or those

You like most will agree

Are ways one righteously

Transgresses against those

Others who hem you in.

Few people, few poets

Are as willing as, say,

Olds writing The Beetle,

To desperately transgress

In truly personal,

Cringe-inducing, strange ways.

To be that personal—

Not necessarily

Intimate, only in

The sense of whatever

Odd twists you curl through things—

Is truly transgressive,

Betrayal of team things.