Questions Along A Tortured Path Poem by Roy Merchant

I wonder where, along your tortured path
Did the light from your essence go dim?
Where, oh where, along this journey so short
Did you decide, you did not want to swim?

How could it happen, this seamless change?
Was it at the beginning, before your birth?
When you first glimpsed the life ahead,
Looked in the conclusions of your future
And buried your self worth

When did you decide you had no value, no visibility, no light?
Who made your recipe for survival so frail?
An emaciating, finite spiral to oblivion.
With no senses, no judgement, no notion to review your trail.

What must it be like to be afraid of harmless shadows?
Insecurity, like raw, unhealable, forever painful sores.
Your soul dying, because a stranger did not say hello.
Your heart crying because no one opens the doors.

How do you exist, with an ego so unsure of itself?
How do you take the day, sleep, wake and brave another?
Constantly looking for the eagerly awaited slight
And having perceived it, go any further.

Can we grow from a seed so distorted?
Will we ever turn into a tree, strong and true?
You have to find your own answers and solutions,
In the end, as at the beginning, it is all up to you.

Copyright Roy Merchant
8th February 1996