Tag Archives: tragedy

Softening with Time

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But the Helper (Comforter, Advocate, Intercessor—Counselor, Strengthener, Standby), the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name [in My place, to represent Me and act on My behalf], He will teach you all things. And He will help you remember everything that I have told you. – John 14:26, AMP

Your betrayal nearly hardened my heart
Calcified instead fond episodic memories –
Consciously collected personal events
Stored in temporal lobe.

Imagining possible future experiences 
Not achievable since episodic memories’
Self-knowing awareness is inaccessible, 
Incapable of roaming at will.

Needing to believe my dreamlike ghostly 
Existence isn’t endless just a juxtaposition –
Tragedy and comedy placed side by side to
Accentuate both my sadness and foolishness –
I seek the answers to these mysterious and 
Unexplainable human psyche extremes that
Pull and stretch my mind’s corridors of time.

Hoping to sidestep eternal unawareness,
I pray for a softening with time my mind’s 
Repressive future until it allows petrified
Explicit memories to melt.

Let me consciously recall every pleasant 
Highly emotional date, place, experience 
Containing sentimental value so that my
Hope for a future is restored. 

-	composed March 18, 2021

Yanked Asunder

23 Sunday Apr 2017

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Sadly, some married professed believers in Christ fail to grasp the enormous tragedy they participate in when they allow life’s sooner-or-later difficulties to tear asunder (break in two) their marriages. The two eternal souls that were one are what gets severed (divided), which means these torn asunder souls will eternally remain divided. Selah!

 

 

I’m in love with you but
You’re not with me.
How sour regurgitated
Rejection tastes—that
Bitter pill I swallow each
Time your pushback
Agonizingly reminds me
Unsympathetic, unavailable,
Habitually unfaithful love is
Spiritually powerless to
Consider sanitizing sullied
Soul severed by State laws
Sovereign never sanctions.

Promises broken—spoken
Fruitless assurances—just
Throwaway dime a dozen
Vows guaranteeing nothing.
They unkindly mired down
Shades of life’s inviting
Sounds of wedded bliss
The moment pledged love
Conceded to fears years of
Internal uprisings formed.
Upshot was crumpled couple’s
Fatality—union’s cryptic
Synchronization, two being one,
Ill-advisedly torn into two.

Solo soulmate’s lone pillow
Nightly bathed in waterlogged
Eyes drowning in shattered
Dreams’ vivid demoralizing
Manifestations of merciless acts
That yielded yanked asunder duo.
Tattered and scattered divorcée
Eternally outside marital borders—the
Modern exile without option to
Reinstate pledges and abolish
Dissolution’s disgrace, jilted love,
Lonely bed, and woebegone weeping.

 

~ composed April 23, 2017

 

Jesus answered, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” ~ Matthew 19:4-6, Berean Study Bible

Letting Go (for Aniya)

15 Saturday Dec 2012

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TheDrayton/Wade Family Members At Lucille Wade-Drayon's Funeral righteous person perishes, and nobody gives it a thought. Godly men are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous person is taken away from the evil yet to come. ~ Isaiah 57:1, CJB

 

 

Back in 2003, a friend and colleague asked me if I would write a poem for her that communicates what she wants to say at her goddaughter’s untimely funeral. That poem is this blog entry, and as readers can see this poem was dedicated to Aniya, my friend and colleague’s goddaughter.

However, after the tragedy that happened yesterday at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, I now would like to offer this poem as a tribute to the 20 innocent small children who were slaughtered. I also would like to offer this poem as a word of comfort to every family, friend, and loved one this tragedy has affected.

 

 

Who can understand why all too soon

A child leaves this world before her bloom?

Seeking to know His plan, some reason why

Their beautiful daughter must suffer and die;

With a poured-out heart they tell God their pain

Of having experienced sunshine, but now rain.

 

They say:  We want to hang on to her and tighten our grip,

But it seems the tighter we hold the more she will slip

From this life with us, we briefly came to know.

And then they hear Jesus bidding them to let her go,

To loosen their grip so He can help them understand

That even their child’s life best fits His Divine plan.

 

They ask Him:  Ease our pain, cause our confusion to cease.

He kindly grants their request, when their hold they release,

And place her into His nail-pierced hand full of might,

Having all power to see them through this darkest midnight.

 

They had clung too tightly, so let go they must

And cling instead to their steadfast faith:  “In God we trust.”

 

~ from True Devotion: A Poetic View Of The Consuming Fire Of Total Praise, Worship, And Obedience (2006)

 

My Coal Miner Dad

09 Friday Jan 2009

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Excitedly stirred by the palatable scent

Bacon, eggs and grits make,

My understandably restless body spun wildly

‘Til topsy-turvy I landed,

Shrieking non-stop before a pair of weathered

Hands reached down and lifted me.

These hands worked twelve-hour shifts

Under the Susquehanna River, mining

Fearless, day after day,

Embracing the most dangerous job

He’d ever do just to put food on our

Table, clothes on our backs,

Shoes on our feet, and a better-life

Hope in our minds,

Only to be wronged by illegal harvest

Precipitated by human greed.

Egregious violation caused

Twelve unfound, unmarked

Underground gravesites in flooded, closed-off

Knox’s Anthracite colliery tunnels that

Signified the end of an era.

Mines’ rising death-tolls ceased temporarily with

Nineteen Hundred Fifty-Nine Common Era disaster;

Even still, over seventy-five hundred

Wronged locals that day mimicked the

Slow-burning coal they mined; they

Experienced slow deaths, like

Age thirty-five Dad.

Forced into unemployment, then early retirement.

Encountered struggle after struggle,

Trying to make ends meet,

All of my school-aged years, while

Battling Black Lung disease complications and decades of

Suffering pain from work done by

Worn-torn hands that accentuate his

Discolored fingernails.

Emphysema claimed his life

But not before we enjoyed

Many days like today, when

Breakfast smells awake me,

Hyper activity drops me

Head first on uncarpeted bedroom floor, and my

Hero rescues me, by making

His Emery Board hands my buffer.

Though abrasive and rough,

With much love they handle me with care,

Placing me in his arms, cuddling me, and

Wiping my tear-filled eyes.

Then with softened voice

He assures me he’d never

Let anything bad happen to me on

His watch, for I am a

Gift from God who

Has great plans for me,

Plans He’s just beginning to unfold, but

Will see them through.

Quieted by his soothing tone,

Contented by his comfort and love,

Secured in his arms, I lovingly whispered,

“HAPPY FATHER’S DAY,” DAD.

I thanked God that day for his

Twin towers: Mercy and Grace.

They protected Dad from

Knox Mine disastrous collapse

Six months back, giving me

Precious score plus seventeen to celebrate

“Father’s Day,” every day, of his life.

Truly, God honored this coal-cracker

When He gave me my coal miner Dad.

That’s why thanking God for His Mercy and Grace

Continues to be an every-day desire and an

Every-day occurrence

Twelve years beyond Dad’s passing.

~ composed June 14, 2008 for Father’s Day June 15, 2008