For sometime, I’ve been thinking, I want to write a poem again, needed to write one. Poetry has always helped me truly express what is inside, more than anything else. So today I tapped this out on my iPad, and I can say I feel much relief over having gotten it out. Maybe you can relate to something in it.
THE END OF ME
The sky is gray,
With no sun piercing through
An eider down,
Now dropping white,
As if tiny feathers from heaven
**********
The clock ticks
My ears ring from age and medication
The highway drones in the distance
All else is quiet
Except my mind
**********
My thoughts swirl,
Stirring my heart,
Urging me to release them
On the page
Or burst with the pain of their burden
**********
The written word stabilizes me
In black and white
But yet no rigid platform,
Rather running together,
Like fluid paint on a tilted canvas,
Morphing with my e-motion
**********
Words move us
They spark,
Set everything in motion
Give life
Or kill
Taint
Or tame
**********
Words hold power,
The mightest of magic
Instilling hope,
Spurring us on,
Or feeding our fear
Until we dread life itself
**********
The coin can flip,
On tomorrows
And their supposed mercies
Pain holding the sun,
Captive at the horizon
Each new day,
Another fresh torture
Instead of a blessing
**********
Courage, where are you?
Have you hid from me,
Never to return?
Or perhaps you are used up,
Like a spent battery?
But batteries can be recharged,
Can’t they?
**********
What can charge this heart again?
Or should I say whom?
I know,
It’s Him, as it always is…
**********
I have no power to hide,
To run away
To manufacture courage on my own,
or speak it into being
**********
Yet, I weary
Of asking, pleading, begging
For relief,
Release
Anything but facing
These alien spasms,
Tomorrow all over again
**********
First contorting me,
Then stiffening me,
As if they could snap my very bones,
This foreign power,
Sieging war,
Taking up residence
In my body.
**********
I want it gone,
I want it out,
I want to know it no more,
But yet it remains,
Grows,
Like yeasted bread dough,
A festering wound,
A weed, or
A cancer
**********
What good can this pain produce?
Patience?
Perseverance?
The Bible tells me so,
But can it be?
Why must it be?
**********
Too many questions,
Not enough answers,
I long to go back,
To the start of the equation,
To the beginning,
But life can never be,
What it once was
**********
All I can conclude,
Can put my trust in,
Is that God knows more than I do,
Sees more,
For I am so shortsighted
So small-minded
**********
I do not fear the end of my story,
No, I welcome it,
The process, however,
The slow shedding of this skin
This disease
Terrifies, cripples, blinds, mames
With fear
**********
But I name you, Fear
I call you out
With my sling and stone,
Pauldry, though they may be
Remembering
God fights for me
You don’t stand a chance
**********
Be gone,
Come what may,
I choose
To fight, to believe,
In victory,
A hope I cannot yet see
Today
And every day after that
**********
This,
I now realize
Is where courage
Truly begins—
At the end of me