Redemption and loss

We drink to forget

We drink to escape

We drink to relax

Yet lately i seem to drink to remember

Remember happier days

When i held a beautiful woman in my arms

And all was right in my world

To remember times when i would write all the time

When a sentence or a phrase would hit me

And if i sat down and used it

Words would flow like water down a river

Nowadays its like squeezing water from a coconut

There’s water inside but squeezing it wont work

So i sailed away in an attempt to escape

I sailed away to drink away from all my worries

And in the midst of the drink i found my voice

If only for a moment

A thought stuck my head like in days of yore

And the words flowed

Quick and deep fraught with meaning

I spoke of oceans deep

Of ships in the night

Of battles lost and battles won

Of a single spear being used to fight demons beyond imagining

Now i have nothing

I write from a flow but not a familiar one

I know not where i know not why i know not when

But my voice left me

And returned only for a moment

Now can i find a new one

One that sings a different song?

One that doesn’t always smell of heartache and loss

Of desperation and hopelessness

Though it usually came through on the end in a different note

Will i be allowed to find a voice

Of happiness that is not forced

That is not fake

Can i find a true voice

That speaks to my hopes and dreams

Without being inauthentic

Yet still has tones of my fears and nightmares and of loss

For what are we without the things

That have happened to us

That have shaped us

My fears my heartache my pain

My demons

Have made me into someone

Who is cautious and slow to trust

Quick to love

Quick to defend

And loyal to a bitter end

They have shaped me into someone willing to give my own life

The ultimate price for people i do not know

People who spit at the very mention of my profession

Yet still i put on a uniform every day

That might as well be a target to some

To others it is

I live each day knowing the last words i say to someone

May be the last they’ll ever hear from me

I accepted that long ago

I know the world is not as nice as most would like to think

Yet it is better than some dare to dream

Today I met a man

Named Ryan

Ryan told me of his youth

Of the trouble he caused himself

Of how he rose above it

Of how thinking of his family enabled him

To succeed where so many others had failed

To rise above himself

To change the very nature

Of his own self and change his ways

He spoke of how he was thankful

For the work of people like me

But he didn’t know he was saying those things about me

Yet still he said them b cause he meant them from the bottom of his heart

A convict warmed the heart of a corrections officer

He thanked a man of the same cloth

That held him in jail and prison

For the very fact that they did

For doing their jobs

A series of words we never hear enough

We are the forgotten

We are the neglected

We are the hated that you know nothing about

Yet a man that knew into what i was thanked me

When I revealed it to him

He was even more affluent with his praise and thankfulness

Maybe things like this can help e find my voice

Maybe write less about love and loss

And more about redemption

And ransom for a soul

Yet how can i write what I don’t truly know

Oh i know I’m saved

I know i was redeemed

I know i was ransomed

But I don’t feel it

I don’t feel him

So how can i speak it when i do not know it

How do i experience

Can I experience it without losing myself

Questions without answers

Answer without questions

Usually by now I’ve ended

But somehow its not there yet

But alas the river has dried up

So I don’t know where else to go