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camille
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CAN YOU HEAR ME?
Gutteral Screams
Compassed me all about
Screams of Sadness, Rage and Remorse
I stood there encased in my silent skin of horror
“SHIFT!”, feet unmoving
eyes searching, heart roving
to rhythmic cry’s, my body swaying
to and fro my heart is saying,
CAN YOU HEAR ME?
My cry for help
All the anguish my heart could tare
As I looked into this father’s blank and unmoving stare
Endless pools of heartache and rage
Someone turn the other page
What memories were stored in that sealed trunk in time
In the far corners of his mind
CAN YOU HEAR ME?
Years of training
Baseballs over the fence, and straining
His son’s first awkward step, and raining
First glint of understanding kept
His feet from under, swept
CAN YOU HEAR ME?
If one could take away the suffer
This, I could‘t buffer
Unaware of any sound
Around his son’s neck, a rope was bound
He now hold’s his son with a noose around
As he held his son from birth
Hanging from a tree with all it’s girth
CAN YOU HEAR ME?
Over his shoulder, his son’s growing colder
We held him together
This man and I
His son, a friend and neighbor
We didn’t have ties
CAN YOU HEAR ME?
Now we are bound by the same rope
We tried to grope
We stood there together in a place in time
Where there’s no rhythm no rhyme
CAN YOU HEAR ME?
“CUT THE ROPE!”
CAN YOU HEAR ME?
After having held up my friend along with his father till medical
help arrived…after he’d hung himself back in 1990 –
Yes I have felt anger and rage.
He left behind a daughter, a wife, a mother, and yes the father
Who held him on his shoulder, and a friend who will always remember…
Sometimes I choose to dwell on more pleasant things, yet wearing memories
As a second skin…..
To the memory of Ernest P. (a neighbor)
January 1998
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000206
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