Good Neighbors: 6: Saturday

I scream from the pit,

I roar from within the fires of Hell;
when will I be free?

I have killed for my government,
the horrors of my record are known;
during wartime, my skills were needed,
but I am now a discarded “hero.”

My peacetime is an internal war;
I am a danger to myself.

I wait for relief,
I wait for a changing of the guard,
for an eternal watchman to cometh,
and relieve me of my duty.

Really, I want my memory
to be wiped clean;
I want to let it go.

I wait to be redeemed
for a new beginning.

© 2015 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

This poem is part of a cycle based on the so-called seven Penitential Psalms. The subtitle of the cycle is “Psalms from the Streets”. This entry is based on Psalm 130, and could be subtitled, “The Veteran”

Good Neighbors: 5. Friday

My prayer went unheard, but not my crying;

in my sorrow, I am both visible and invisible.

My days drift away like smoke:
my heart is so shriveled and broken,
I cannot eat, so I grow thin;
Who knows where I have been?

Or what I have done to pass the time?

I walk alone, in a sea of people,
and no one knows my pain;
how could my life perish so,
though my body be yet alive?

In the blink of an eye,
by a shot in the dark,
my child, my life, was taken from me.

All my days since flow like shadows,
and a drought withers me to my roots;
bread is like ashes on my tongue,
water is as bitter as tears;
I go up and down,
but clouds follow me ever,
taunting me with hope
for a rain that never comes.

What did she do, my child,
to meet such a fate?
What did I do to bring it on her?
How could love fail so deeply?

Can anything be done
to loosen the bonds of time
or shorten the days of this turmoil?
When shall I be changed

from pain into dust?

These days endure;
and I am but a worn rag,
but nothing changes,
all remains the same,
for years that have no end,
while I watch children not my own
grow to carry life forward.

© 2015 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

This poem is part of a cycle based on the so-called seven Penitential Psalms. The subtitle of the cycle is “Psalms from the Streets”. This entry is based on Psalm 102, and could be subtitled, “The Bereaved.”