Chain Letters

prayed over its lines with such ardent conviction
that this message would infect the reader,
inspiring it to be forwarded with intense passions
so the energy would reverberate with waves of blessings
rippling across my life in tidal flows of enrichment.

But I got so busy writing what I wanted to hear
never gave thought to what the other person would think,
only letting my greed control my fingers,
so very persuaded if my desire had enough power
nobody would detect the truth about its selfish motives.

Oh how I dreamt of all the bounty in enhancing vibrations,
which would charge through my essence
making me a magnet for good fortune and luck.

It all seemed so perfect and an ideal means for reaping
every wish and whim my being had been denied,
thinking my ruse in words would never be discovered,
just weave some manipulative magic
with enough flattery and hope
until the letter generated reactions
and every recipient couldn’t resist
sending me some increments of compensation
in keeping with my sentence’s suggestions.

Then sitting back and waiting for the mail
to bring a harvest for my labors.
The days past and nothing came,
discovering later my phrases had brought enlightenment
about how to con others,
inflaming the receiver to merely forward that correspondence
without bothering to mention me at all,
because my lust for gain was what they absorbed
instead of my attempts at seducing,
ending up a victim of my own orchestrated endeavors
by ironically giving others the means to act out
what I thought I had disguised as offers to improve
while secretly craving to make them my pawns.