Survival

 

A poem about losing innocence.

Being wounded by love, society, and broken ideals, Being saved (but not cured) by art. Living with awareness that sadness never fully leaves—it only changes shape.

It doesn’t ask, “Are you healed?”

It asks something more honestly: “How are you surviving—and what keeps you from disappearing?”

Survival 

(A lone voice whispers)

Do you blindly in the old silence of your mind? Subsist with violence?

Like a once playful spirit who's been shattered into a million pieces?

Are you wandering lost but just constantly looking for guidance?

Like when you first met poetry or its mesmerizing lyrics in music?

And in those throes of new beginnings, did it encourage you to strive to come alive?

To try to bloom, to truly exist.

Did you abuse it when someone or something cruel made you say goodbye to all those once holy days?

When you were possibly in love or tainted by all those sad portraits sketched so beautifully, by what unkind, strange people say?  

Which some in society like to see painted in so many devious ways.

Ideals and principles uttered by people you deliciously cherished.

Loved or once worshipped.

As you wandered throughout that old life sheltered in unconditional bliss.

But when those spectacular times came to an abrupt end, you found the courage to depression resist.

When you looked for something truly meaningful.

To infuse your heart and soul into, like Saint John the Baptist.

Did you find a serene taste of tranquility in the written, spoken, or sung-out word?

To help heal and give you back a sense of being in total control? 

Did the years of being a true or part-time disciple to music.

Poetry or any form of catharsis. 

Help you find the freedom that continuously encouraged you to read, listen, or practice? To discover a more profound understanding of self-prosperity. 

That for you was invariably your implicit goal and a means to pay some of your soul's taxes.

But do you now live on a knife-edge with the Sword of Damocles? Hanging over you?

As you relate to new and old tales overflowing with happiness or pronunciations.

Centered and surrounding like an invading army.

A lonely word called Sadness?

(C)

Copyright John Duffy

Image shared under fair usage policy.