NaPoWriMo 2014 Day 6: Promethean

The poet Maitreyabandhu said in a talk that Poetry is not therapy and I don't agree with him. I will acknowledge that therapeutic poetry can struggle to be good poetry as we are wrestling with something that we can't quite get to grips with but for me poetry can be exactly the tool for working with those things we don't understand yet. For bringing some light to them.



Promethean


My eyes are on fire.
She must know what she's doing
with the man in her charge.
Attended all legal training.
I don't want to do it.
Where is the line between
politeness and duty?
Stop sticking my nose in.
I don't want to do it.
The establishment is voiceless,
surely with approval?
Risk assessments in place.
Surely?

A silence falls in the room.

An insidious calm, that whispers,

pretend.

Pretend as if it never happened,
that everything is ok.
Until you are silly enough
to turn around.
Fool enough
to see him bound.
What emotion
surges from the sea
of consciousness?

A compassion for another's suffering,
which widens out to all those beings
who find themselves tied?

A fear that we might be next?
That the wheel turns onward
to tear all faculties from us.

The shame of the wrong choice?
That evil can occur this day
if we choose not to act.

Or can we finally stop lying
that people are fixed
and chained to one position.
Acknowledge the truth
that we are a vortex
of all these and more.
Including the part
you choose to abhor
bearing sympathy
for the jailor.
For the meticulous
accounting of events
that lead them there.