Counterinsurgency

Snow fell silent and deep on the street that endless night  

Immaculately shrouded where they were found, lying too still    

Screams, shouts, sirens rend the air, shrill    

too late, nothing to be done    

Blessed be the True Judge  

They was the light of their parent’s lives    

Terrified, tearful, they’d watched, prayed      

as their child fell from grace, no fault their own    

Their voice, heart, soul stolen to satisfy base lusts    

of those sworn to educate and protect    

Innocence, faith. virtue violently severed    

by those they was taught to respect and trust    

How could they have spoken, what could be said    

to define such which defied all explanation?    

Why would they force themselves to relive, to remember    

what should never have been?    

They had tried everything they knew to hold on    

but demanding a life free of deceit, in their control    

Alienated from those who had no comprehension    

yet should have listened harder, known better  

Getting drunk after prayers every morning?    

Anesthetized the agony of associating with sociopaths    

feted as reputable venerated members of their society    

Sleeping til noon, confined to bedroom for days and nights?    

Concealing the quiet-inducing lacerations on tender skin    

that the nights couldn’t deliver, too afraid to close their eyes    

knowing the inevitable visitation of assailant’s eyes and voices    

The drugs? To numb pain nothing could possibly ease    

The music? To block revolting, insidious whispers.    

A soul need suffer only so long      

before granted reprieve and beckoned home    

The snow was Heaven creating a soft landing    

Divine soul wrested from wretched corporeality.    

The Angel of Death finally came to heed the call    

Cradling, soothing,hushed all the pain and shame    

carrying divine soul to eternal peace and reprieve    

Suicide, influences, temptation, mental illness    

So-called community paragons hastily judged    

Better to sweep it away, not let people suspect    

Interrogative individuals are clandestine danger    

Other young voices demanded they be heard    

Voices too loud, too numerous to be ignored  

We have also been violated, betrayed    

We were innocent, we are faithful no longer    

We trusted, we believed, we prayed,      

We gave benefit of doubt, yet no more.    

Restrain your mourning for us – we are finally free    

Lament for yourselves, for your ignorance    

Whether deliberate or subliminal.      

wail for the monsters in your midst    

Hiding behind holy books and pious words    

For collective cowardice in inevitable separation    

For aforesaid transgressions, there will never be atonement    

Live with your shame in this world as well as the next    

Let it shorten your breath, darken your peace, mar every joy    

We are legion, those who have been used and abused    

coerced, shamed unwillingly into silence and submission    

Nothing in this world will stifle or subdue us any longer    

Our innocence is gone, our faith no longer yours.    

 We will flourish, more authentic than you could become    

Recapturing love, redefining faith, living lucid, cognizant truth