Via Doloroso

by Bob McNeil

While gazing into the hole where my hope used to be,

I considered my generation, replete with its sneaker-

soft, headphone-detached, video-diverted, Prozac-

anesthetized, computer-impersonal lives.

I considered my generation that was never drafted.

I considered my generation that never endured

a pride-deprived Depression Era.

The one undeclared war we all fought was with our Psyches—

a battle against our inadequate beings.

Our Great Depression was felt in the dustbowl of our brains,

and in grey matter shantytowns, all of us begged for compassion.

While gazing into the hole where my hope used to be,

for more yard bird years than I was willing to confess in verse,

I remembered those dead-man-deaf days of being oblivious,

stone-stiff and asleep, covered by a blanket of apathy,

unaware of the world and its wants, the turmoil within its soil.

While gazing into the hole where my hope used to be,

from my inscrutable spirit to my phlegmatic fibrous cords,

on September 11^th, 2001,

I felt the patriarchal pain of mankind’s loss.

I heard the tympanum-tearing,

heart-piercing cries of the maimed and martyrized.

Then, on that day of dismay, wrathful words—

alien as battlefields before my birth—were on my tongue,

and wrathful feelings—sharper than swords—

lacerated my being with rage.

While gazing into the hole where my hope used to be,

I felt decimated by destiny’s dark and stark turn.

I lamented this municipality’s metallic testicles

that were torn and shorn.

I filled lachrymatories for each stranger who was assassinated

by winged Luciferous legions.

While gazing into the hole where my hope used to be,

I praised a platoon of police, firemen, paramedics

and construction workers, the knight-and-hero-hearted,

who were trying to save the sheep-innocent from a slaughter house.

I cast prayers upon those with steel-clad courage

for fighting the grim grasp of the Reaper

on the rubble-buried masses.

I realized, despite their girders of grief,

these valiant citizens continued to make the vanquish

of this Republic seem victorious.

They let the poltroon minions of evil know

that despots will never have dominion

over a dream of “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

While gazing, pride finally filled the wound in my woeful heart.