‘Glimpses Across The Barricades’ #Poetry #Memoir “The Tears We Just Can’t Cry.”

Welcome again to my Poetry in Progress. This particular poem was written in the days after the last of the valiant kids I’d lived with on the streets ended his life.  It is one of many poems I’ve written for and about those dear people. All damaged strangers, they took me into their hearts, their home, and their lives.  My journey through life was forever altered by their existence and forever bereft at their loss.

Glimpses Across The Barricades

 The Tears We Just Can’t Cry.

Dedicated with love to all the kids from ‘The Palace’

By

Suzanne Burke

There are those that never cry them

Those tears that cleanse the soul

For the rivers they create

Will never make them whole.

The anger they hold to them

Like a dark defensive shield

Holds back a tide of tenderness

Only undamaged ones can feel

Dark dreams forever taunt them

Laughing at their pain

As they leave veins forever open

To bleed out in life’s rain.

And when the waves of despair come

They have no place to hide

No shelter can enclose them

They have no sense of pride

They are afraid to face a future

If their barriers they remove

In case a love should die there

Best unknown, to be so mourned.

The ending that they pray for

Lay waiting in the wings

And for some it is hastened

By sad choices their lives bring.

As for those still left standing

That seek a way to cry

They spend a life demanding

Just one reason why.

There remains no place to hide now

No safe harbor from the storm

Nothing to prevent the cascade

Of tears as yet unborn.