Tuesday, February 26, 2008

The Broken One

The issue of abused women is one that doesn't go away. (Like many issues, it is one that will never go away until Jesus returns and all things are made new) This poem is about an imaginary girl, but the problems she represents are anything but imaginary. A victim of some form of abuse since childhood, she runs away, ends up in prostitution (where of course she gets re-abused over and over)and ends up on drugs to numb the impossible pain of being a human being who has been reduced to living like a brute beast. This is not about the rights and wrongs of her situation; which of us, really honestly, has lived so blamelessly, so free of ever making wrong choices, that we have any right to stand in judgement? This is about a broken soul who needs to know that her only hope of healing lies in a God who was broken for her ..

Out of the limelight’s glare
Shadows where none will care.
Huddled in slimy street
Garbage beneath your feet
Garbage attacks your soul:
Who knows what more they stole?

Body an empty shell
Mind on the brink of hell
Absent from all that’s real
(For who can bear to feel?)
Only the sullen rain
Cries for such dreadful pain.

Blank are the eyes that see
Things that should never be
Plaything, discarded, lost,
Used only once, then tossed
Leaving the flesh behind
Cleaving the broken mind.

“Love” is the user’s word
Yet strangely still preferred
The bleak command of pain
Calling to feel again
Therefore oblivion’s haze
Swallows unwanted days.

Already lost in hell
Why then condemn as well?
Only love crucified
Goes where the heart has died
Lifting aside the stones.
Breathing on barren bones.

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