What I Wish Someone Had Told Me when I Was 14
Posted: Friday, July 29, 2011
by Nicholas Gordon
http://www.poemsforfree.com
EVIL HAS NO EASY EXPLANATION
Evil has no easy explanation.
Everyone is evil and is good.
Sometimes we watch ourselves do something evil
Frozen in a scream that's never heard.
We cannot stop ourselves, so we go on,
Knowing somewhere else the horror plays
And plays and plays until we are forgiven,
Healed by someone's gift of unearned love.
Evil, like a mad dog, crouches near.
One buries it deep in a vaulted, lead-lined chamber,
But zombie-like it stalks the world within.
It's strange that darkened children need forgiveness
For evil that they suffer, innocent.
But guilt's the trademark of humiliation,
Burned into the flesh of memory.
Love washes over evil like an ocean,
Sweeping over seething, fisted anger,
Drowning it in cold, unquiet depths,
Leaving you weak and weeping on the strand.
You wouldn't be yourself without the pain
That twists inside like penitential dancers,
Making you the stage of some strange beauty,
Like no one else, the host of our redemption.
THE PAIN WILL NEVER GO AWAY
The pain will never go away;
The wound will never heal.
The evil that was done to you
Is now your eyes, your heart.
The black will never turn to gray;
The blood will not congeal.
The violence is never through;
The past does not depart.
Time will merely make you whole,
Consuming what you are:
Part sufferer, part comforter,
Part victim, part new song;
Part mother of an angry soul,
Part child of despair,
Part witness and part conqueror
Of all that did you wrong.
THERE ARE TIMES THE SEA IS SULLEN RAGE
There are times the sea is sullen rage,
And all the wind can carry is despair.
The morning barely brightens the dark air,
And life is what no comfort can assuage.
There is pain too pure for any sage,
When breath is what precisely is not fair,
And hope seems hopelessly beyond repair,
Unlikely to recover much with age.
Ah, then, sweet child, know that you are loved
Simply for the glory of your being,
Regardless what you think or say or do!
This is a gift that cannot be removed,
A passion for a passion beyond seeing
That waits within the darkness just for you.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)So I felt you looked into my soul. I will certainly be back to read these beautiful poems again.
From a darkened soul unzipping the cloak inch by inch
Jill
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