The Storm!

You can hit the roof

Burning in  anger.

And the tiles burst asunder.

You can walk million miles,

Or a bit longer,

Until the feet blister,

To assuage the heartache 

From which you suffer.

Go, if you like, benevolent.

And set up an organization

To assist victims of  cruel  affliction,

Or more like it, 

To help oneself deal with raw emotions.

Deliriously whale and groan, 

As if impaled with  a harpoon.

Or talk to yourself while you walk,

Raving lunatic that you have become,

Until people began to think.

Or commonly visit the hot spot -

Where your fortune has gone to pot -

In body and mind,

Several times a day;

Every week,

Year in year out.

But what you are looking for

Not a zilch of it is to be found.

Then relief comes with dusk,

You drug yourself to bed.

Hoping the day long misery to end.

But how wrong can  you be 

In thinking  the respite needed you  will  ever  get?

For there  is  something you did  indeed forget!

Night being the twin brother of day -

An adversary currently you are at loggerheads with -

Will target you as a soft victim to interrogate,

Until very little of your sanity  is left.

And once you are done,

It will throw you at its brother's gate.

As vulnerable and a weak as you are,

Dawn comes and ushers you to light,

Now as a matter of habit,

The usual search goes on,

Just the same,

Tons of efforts deployed, but no fruit is borne.

This much, however,  you have come  know

Wherever ya' go and whatever you do

You are mindful of the irrecoverable  loss:

And nothing can take its place,

If only you could cope and learn  how to live with.

Copyright Haileselassie Girmay

22/10/2004