VERDIGRIS
Verdigris
Dirt of years.
The warm glow of rosy youth
Disappears
And the power of others
Takes hold,
Inflicting pain
More than can be told.
A black smell of bitterness
And despair
Surrounds what?
Is it an empty hollowness
Or is it raw flesh flinching from hurt?
Where have the healing hands been in all these years?
Where is the water to wash the wounds
And soothe the hurts?
It’s hard
To live
In the Valley of Illusion and Despair,
For Death,
In all His many forms,
Lives there.
Sometimes He wears a happy mask -
Sometimes His beauty makes you cry -
But always He is Death
And you say you don’t care
Until He takes His mask off
And you stare Him in the face
And the stench of His breath makes you run.
Light a candle in the dark
And
In that place
The candles belong to Him too.
By their light you see heaven.
It’s made of plastic
And soon catches fire
And melts in clouds
Of poisonous smoke.
Is there a real Heaven?
How can you know?
How can you tell
If all your world is and has been the Valley?
Trust is taking the hand
Of one who knows and walking away from there.
Your feet are dagger-pierced
And at times your blood feels like liquid lead
But a little bit of light is enough
For a start
And one day you are alive.
There’s only one way to be free
So clean away the Verdigris
Who’s to do it? You, not me.