Once crowded streets are empty,
The world is bent and torn…
A future full of promise
Seems lifeless and stillborn.
Our dreams are somehow darker…
Strange omens, stranger signs…
Furtively surround us
Where fear, like chains, confines.
Some of us are not at home,
Where things familiar dwell…
Yet even home is Heaven for some,
While others know it’s Hell.
The sorcerers of sickness,
Small devils, lurk unseen…
Hiding in the crevices
Of shadows in between….
The nightmares of awakeness
And the ravages of sleep,
Their greedy talons toward our minds
Inexorably creep.
Don’t limply near the precipice,
Slide into the abyss:
Don’t heed depression’s siren call,
Nor wallow in her kiss.
For underneath the strangeness,
The losses and the fear,
Lurk Spirits of Endurance,
Invisible, yet near.
And, in a day thus far un-named,
Our joy will light the skies…
As shackles of this curse dissolve,
And we again shall rise.