evening thoughts on easter monday

[tom.d.stiller]

evening thoughts on easter monday

brain damage after a heart attack
the soul abandoned this breathing shell
a colleague died from cancer
32 years of hope spent in vain
a kitten in the kiln cremated
run over by a stray limousine
another grandmother crying
with a baby dead in her arms
while i sit here distilling vintage words
from garrulous idiosyncrasies
and try to reach for reason without rhymes

then those who starve
who plagued by fever
suffer thirst
then those who grieve
who haunted by hope
lost track of their tears
while i sit here distilling helpless words
from barren idolatry
and rhymes without reason

what is the value of our wails
what is the weight of a cry
what good are words
what a word is god

no poem to rise from these lines
no saviour to rise from these days

[lizzytysh]

Tom ~

For me, your poem underscores the juxtapositioning I see every day as I sit at my computer and read the various news sites and look at all the photographs....and think of how this war came packaged with the ribboned "intent" of keeping us "safe." We live such privileged lives of relative safety, to have such luxury as using Edit/Delete/Backspace keys.

Yet, still whilst dealing with these issues, even if only visually, our spirit continues to strive to make ~ out of chaos, order ~ out of rubble, beauty ~ the poem part of our own survival mechanism.

~ Elizabeth