I wrote this poem in high school and shared it at an event I coordinated, commemorating International Human Rights Day, December 10, 2003. It was supposed to embody the ‘forgotten” and/or what was often referred to in the international human rights community as the “Prisoner of Conscience”:
Strengthen Me
Words I have not found
Terrors kept unbound
gashing this un-kept soul
lying inept with the frozen wound
As shutting eyes
transcend unspoken thoughts…
Of the placid ocean spurring no waves
Away from gray skies and darkness from caves
Lifting the eyelids…
viewing nothing, hearing nothing, feeling nothing…
I have wailed and received no response.
Trembling every movement with dismay…
Frightened moments this fear must outweigh…
An allusion that had hoped to be gone…
never-ending ailments of meagerness.
Trapped behind Iron bars…
Raped and sculpted with Erratic Scars…
I await for the remedy.
Await to acquire warmth.
One may ponder
Why warmth comes to those who do not inquire it…
I have contested:
May I have a life to live….
May I have to gain from the world…
May I have to give to this world…
Yet I am seen not dignified..
Nothing beneath has been amplified..
I await for the rescue from the excruciating tide..
Severity is the need to share…
This emotion..
that has been hidden unfair.
I have spoken of the serene relentless moments of beauty:
Recalled the vestitude of laughing, smiling young hearts…
Recalled the sun’s radiance at the rise of dawn..
Recalled the glow of the placid waterside and simmering stars…
Recalled the sweet exquisite aroma of elegant rose fields…
Recalled the glorious rhythm of spring dew drops…
And even as I have fallen..
I have remembered You.
Somewhere beyond the thorns and thistles….
Cowardly hiding from the world…
As I fight this agony so cold…
and perhaps not lay here, rot, and mold…
Rather destroy all velocities of anguish…
And strengthen me
In my emptiness.
ETK
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