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Behind the Walls

I’m behind the walls, too. In the wake of division, I try to peer over, but can’t. I try to climb over, towering walls, trenches, barriers, hills and rivers and nearly make it before I’m called back. The stamp of boots brings me to trembling, to remembering, what of goodness? If I ascend the walls, what’s there for me on the other side, the end of hatred, murder, rape and war? Is it possible to escape the exhibition?

I’m tired of the clatter and clack of teeth and gunfire, the moans of shattered children, I want to scale the walls, escape the noise. But I've been summoned, called back to grapple another day or fetch laughter from clinched jaws. I cannot exit now, the stakes are too high, like a razor-blade held against my tightening throat.

Man’s kinship is breathing near the heart of truth. It is panting, eager and trembling near the stone that weighs down love and hides my joy. The walls push me back. The barricades are like cords wrapped around my neck, the furrows I've dug in hearts and souls cannot be undug, but can be filled.

Barricades hold me away from truth like an improvised bomb sending me skyward, tumbling in disappointment, crashing through silence like noise with a firmness uncalled for, a gruesome face.

Why are walls our king, lies our prince and war our god? There are ravines filled with medals, fathers and young sons, mothers and daughters, brothers and sisters held down with clay, with infamy and dread, and there are valleys of water lapping up man’s fatty venom.

I’m behind the walls, too, waiting on love to scale them with limbs of exactness, hands at the ready, waiting to curl up in my lofty expectation. I'll Ignore the walls, trenches and barriers, and embrace the hills and rivers like the voices in my dreams speaking truth. Walls can be torn down and assembled into smiles, joy can snuggle with me like kittens, their softness, my instructor, ascend goodness, leave the walls for art, that I might gaze upon them with wonder.


© 2010 by mark prime


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