Poetry Offering #1

I was unable to sleep one night recently until I got up and wrote down this poem. Thought I'd share it with you, whoever you are (I noticed somebody besides the NSA has been looking at my blog. At least one is a spammer called Fat Loss Factor. Others are probably my friends from escape-gaming. So for all, spooks, scamps and fellow scalawags, here goes) - this is a riff on an old song, 'I Come and Stand at Every Door, which refers to Death coming to take your young ones off to war.

PARENTS

I come and stand at every door

and then I go inside

What name do you have for me 

from whom you cannot hide?

Am I Jesus or the Devil

your conscience or a djinn

Am I working for the government

or all your fellow men?

You will not see me clearly

not the way that I see you

with your shame and pain and anger 

shaping everything you do

The pillow on your daughter's bed

so heavy with her tears

The wrinkles on your son's forehead

are deep beyond his years

The music you refuse to face

sings softly of your guilt

but loudly of your cowardice

and all you have not built

like trust, and love, and unity

and power to believe

in something uncorrupted

yet you will not grieve

For you think you do the right thing 

though it decimates your soul

And it's only what was done to you

before you had control

When they lied to you and beat you up

and said "It's good for you"

though your bodies tightened and twisted

and your hearts and minds did too.

A bully is a coward, 

driven by a lonesome fear,

by alienation powered,

lost to knowledge, love and cheer.

Such monsters were your parents

and like them you have become

I see it written everywhere

in your unhappy home.

Here is no puzzle to be solved,

no mystery to me

Your tight tired impatient faces

make the history plain to see

I come and stand and see it all

but nothing can I do

I am just a fellow human

wishing you were human too