Terror 2015

Every now and again I try my hand at poetry.  It's one of my goals to read more poetry, ever since a professor in college had us memorize poems for exams while gallivanting around England.  Wordsworth, Keats, Yeats and Byron became not just familiar names, but authors of familiar poems.  I still recall sitting in a circle quoting poetry to each other.

Of course, quoting poetry is not like writing it.  I know some rules--Imabic pentameter, couplets, haiku, and sonnets are the most formal poetry style I can imitate.  But sometimes I feel like words are burning through my soul, drifting around in my mind, and stirring my heart.  It's usually images or strong descriptive words.  Occasionally alliteration will find itself itching into illustrations.  In those times, rules become harder to for me to follow.  

Last year, when refugees fled, when bullets shot civilians in Syria and Paris (and many other places!), I needed an outlet.  I wrote this poem as a work in progress, but think it's ready to be shared in its progress. 

  

"Terror 2015"

Boom. Bombs and bullets pierce

Restaurants and music halls

Hospitals and schools

Church walls echoing joyful songs

Become ruins beneath dirges

The call to prayer goes out

The one who answers

Calls his mother on the phone

Next to a driver and the explosion

Changes everything into

Dust and Ashes. 

Flash. We sit in a movie theater

Pretending the terror is elsewhere

Hoping to remain safe

And isolated

Holding a hand and a phone

When the screen shatters

And smoke fills the air

Is this a movie?

We cannot hear

We cannot see

Bodies and Blood.

We long for the day

When night is safe

When countries are homes

And trust

Overflows into borders and

I call you neighbor

And I know you name

You know my children

Take care of my mother

For I must leave

Country and Countrymen.

Do not think He

Has come to bring

Peace, but a sword.

We trade our

Swords for plowshares

And You repair the broken ear

Of a solider doing his duty

In the garden on the night

Of Your greatest

Voluntary suffering

Crucifix and Thorns.

Staying here

Will be safe

The goal of my life

The drudgery of work

A glimmer in the distance

Where dirt and ashes

Are covering bloody bodies.

Leave country and countrymen?

Take up the cross?

Higher up and Further in.

Give us eyes to put down

Our swords and phones

To know our neighbors

And live in awareness

That you are with us

That you have not asked us

To take up a cross you did not

First take up

In a country that was not your home.

Come Quickly, Lord.