So Alone in Your Room - Not!

Sweat Sixteen

by Rick Hilber

Does anyone know? Does anyone care
What your situation is out there?

Your church has shunned you
For having accused its elder
Of sexual impropriety.
Your child asks, “What’s that?”

Does anyone know? Does anyone care
What your situation is out there?

The home paid for back in 2009
With your child’s death benefit
Your former wife now has lost,
Lost as she always has been in a stupor.

Does anyone know? Does anyone care
What your situation is out there?

Suspended from duty, you exclaim,
For shooting dead a homeless man
Who pulled a knife when startled by your stick.
What do you do for your badge of honor?

Does anyone know? Does anyone care
What your situation is out there?

Told at the V.A. to suck it up,
The daughter home at last
Sleeps in night sweats
Back in Afghanistan.

Does anyone know? Does anyone care
What your situation is out there?

Sixteen long years she took to die,
Living for others in the moment,
Your child’s abandoned you now.
Has she really ever left, you wonder?

Does anyone know? Does anyone care
What your situation is out there?

 
News of your only child in prison
Is that he’s started on ministry
To wash himself first of his shame,
A comfort to others just the same.

Does anyone know? Does anyone care
What your situation is out there?

Your teenager who handed off a gun
To the police officer back in 3rd Grade,
Now reads in the paper its use
In the homicide of a child.

Does anyone know? Does anyone care
What your situation is out there?

A former spouse who absconded
With your life savings calls you
Out of the blue for a night’s stay,
But you send him away by rights.

Does anyone know? Does anyone care
What your situation is out there?

You’ve been a john in a sting,
Shut out of your home too,
A shame to your children.
Allowed home again? What chance?

Does anyone know? Does anyone care
What your situation is out there?

What help all that practice of meekness
When stopped on the freeway
For a taillight that was out, or not,
And thrown to the pavement and cuffed?

Does anyone know? Does anyone care
What your situation is out there?

Trapped in a sadness, a room without exit,
You weep for the suffering of others
Safe in your room, safe but alone,
But not without a paper and a pen.

Does anyone know? Does anyone care
What your situation is out there?

Your seminary committee
Refused you ordination for
Your spiritual reservations,
Or was it for mental aberrations.

Does anyone know? Does anyone care
What your situation is out there?

Your husband makes a living
Selling worthless bonds he’s said
Defrauding the simple minded
With his familiar seductive charm.

Does anyone know? Does anyone care
What your situation is out there?

I hear they consider you an early senile,
They who now vote down public education,
The same for whom you funded private lessons
And the ones you segregated in exclusive academies.

Does anyone know? Does anyone care
What your situation is out there?

Your boss refuses you a living wage
While his limousine idles in the lot
And his trophy wife rules from home
That no one is to blame, he parrots.

Does anyone know? Does anyone care
What your situation is out there?

Let me take you by the hand,
We are not alone I say.
We have shared what we each have,
What little we have with another.

©2015 by Richard J. (Rick) Hilber.
All rights reserved.