I Want Life!

[Guest guest]

mazie wrote...

Should of, 'sposed to, ought to have,

duty, service, anchors of expectant others...

brothers, sisters, mothers and children, and the weight

of their world crashing crushes indelibly into my heart.

What could I impart about anything to anyone when I am not

anyone's answer to questions or needs or pleas of urgency.

The insurgency of my mind and heart in conflict is exquisite,

acute, rooted in mood and memory of mayhemic episodes

of the death and the dying of those I've heard crying,

"I want life!"

Wanting to do what's right, the strife is clean and noted

as I'm goaded by regret and guilt to fulfill the needs of another.

Regret? Guilt? What blade has its hilt buried in my side?

What lie is telling itself, selling itself to the river of melancholy,

the river of eloquent contrivance of devices to avoid,

to avoid entirely the dying and the disease of a friend?

What amen to the Friend indicates the end

of having to please others

to recover from the past offenses etched into this soul-skin?

I am rended with the sense of duty calling,

and I falling into fearful faithless avoidance

of what has come my way today.

Oh Fey! Fickle is this Frontman with my hand in the fire!

You're singing to the choir, soul-trumped throat

aspiring to conspire

a means to escape the song

that's set itself aflame

in the Lord of Love's Heart.

There is no part that can be divided into yes and no.

We go where we are called, appalling or appealing.

This duty nearly kills me as this call is more like falling,

falling further, calling

with all the heartbreak

that the tender human heart can bear to endure,

but one thing's for certain,

there will be no shirking this moment now,

now, plowed Sky of Life, rippled ripe

with light and shadow...

It had to happen. It's happening.

My sister's dying.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Dearest Mazieji:

So honestly you say it.

I cannot get you out of my mind

nor the poem which graces the first

chapter of "On Death and Dying" which keeps

coming into my mind. So I go find it, and I see

it in a different light now. Last year and when

I had first read it closely, I had seen it as the prayer

of the dying. Now I see it as the prayer of the living for

the courage to confront the dying with grace and fortitude.

http://www.omshaantih.com/Poetry/Tagore/Fruit/Gathering/Prayer/Let%20me%20not.htm

Love,

Joyce