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