Prayer

I must
          not succeed.

                      Success is the mind-killer.

Success
           is the little-death
           that brings total

obliteration. I will face

                                 my success. I will

permit it to pass

                       over me and through

me. And when it has
                       gone
                                                past, I will

turn the inner

                      to see

its path. Where

the success has        gone there will be

nothing.
                      Only I will remain. 

Credit

Copyright © 2015 by David Tomas Martinez. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 21, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

“’Prayer’ is a gerrymandering of Frank Herbert’s Dune, a novel I devoured as a teenager. By reconfiguring and altering the language of Paul Atreides’s mantra, this poem reveals the contiguous space fear and success occupy in the mind.”
—David Tomas Martinez