Saving Lives

Today for my Intro to Creative Writing class, I was asked to consider words to describe an individual from my life who does a job that I could not fathom doing myself. Instead, I straight up banged out this poem. This goes out to you, Dad, one of the most under-appreciated people I know.

Saving Lives

Every day he rises
to the worries and woes of others,
building upon his own,
a violent set of Legos,
cutting his hands
each time he adds a blemished brick.
Every day he trudges forth
to do battle against invisible enemies,
both beyond and within.
His hand reaches out
to touch thousands of lives
that may never truly know.
A man shudders in a ditch
as his breath is suddenly returned to him
in a shock of hope.
Yet, another fades from the world,
but never from his eyes,
ceaselessly seeing his dead compatriots
of a cruel and careless world
that will take just as soon as give
without rhyme or reason,
seemingly pointless purposes being carried out.

He's saved countless hearts,
yet his own suffers with every strained sigh,
his own life struggling as he helps others to flourish.
The nights grow ever longer,
blending with day into a gross concoction,
a grayish mold he stumbles through,
a bog that blinds these fools
to his full effect on a thankless lot.

My youthful eyes follow
brawny shoulders and kindly smiles
as he recalls what can only be viewed as tall tales
by an uncertain tyke,
just as sightless as the dismissive and damned denizens
of this troubled town.
But now that I've grown
to stand by his side and in his shoes,
hawk's eyes blossom in my empty sockets,
showing me a truth that wheezes in my chest,
shaking in the effort to survive

the wounds that have been inflicted

over ages of vicious neglect,

knives protruding from my breast

for days on end,

unaddressed, not concerning to most.

I now reach out to the man who raised me

and tug at the rusty sword

that I once swung on as a kid,

not seeing the pain etched in his face

as I plunged it further and further

into his soul,

maddeningly silent and forlorn.

It’s stuck fast,

melancholy crusted around it,

a red plaster holding the pain in place;

but, together we will work at it

with rough sponges and soothing words

so that this saber may one day

be slipped from the stone statue

that once was my father.