poetryvlog.com

Welcome to poetryvlog.com
A weekly video reading of poetry by the poet.

Samaritan
by Aoife Mannix

You tell me it’s about listening,
not pouring the answer
boiling water on an open wound.
The salt sting of other people's advice
not worth the telephone bill,
cos most people know in their heart of hearts
what it is that’s eating them alive.
They're not stupid,
or at least they got the sense to know their lost,
and some kind of loss
got nothing to do with maps,
men in suits handing out directions
like they got a hot line to Christ himself.
None of those books say anything
about who or how you got to love, just that you should,
and that’s the part falling on deaf ears.
Cos it’s easy to stand on your mountain
handing out your mutual choice judgements,
ticking your boxes, labelling people like cabbages.
It’s not running round shouting and jumping,
shoving your prepackaged solutions down the throats of those
who’ve had to swallow far more then you will ever know about.
It’s sitting at four in the morning in a badly lit room
with a few other volunteers who do this
anonymous, first name need to know only.
And when you pick up that phone,
you just got to take the words as they come.
You can't put them on hold
to call the ambulance, the police, the next door neighbour.
You have to respect their choices,
just asking the questions that help to tell their story
cos for once, this is not about you, this is about the end of the line,
and we all been there at some point or other.
And even when their murderers, abusers,
hang up just to reach for the needle, the glass,
doing to their kids the very things that were done to them.
When you want to scream why don’t you leave that man
that’s been knocking you round over twenty years.
Some doors just aren’t so easy to walk out of,
and if you think you got the answer,
you don’t understand the question.
There are wheels within wheels,
and if you hold your breath long enough,
and really let their tears, a river crashing through your ears,
you start to see that underneath suffering,
most of us are trying to make a little bit of goodness
in the face of impossible odds.
And there’s a heart beating down the telephone line.
And if there were more of us, just listening,
there wouldn’t be so many lying by the side of the road,
while you hurry on by every day of your life
not hearing their cries.

home