A Prayer



Take a blob of pain and erase it with a drop of wine
Any wine can get you high
So choose the one you drink         both like a king
And a soldier

Bundle the mound of troubles fighting the head
And cleanse it entirely with a whiz of music
There is sound in silence
In hopelessness
In noise
There is sound in perturbance  too
So choose the sound that leads you to peace

If a fighter gets weary in the midst of a fight
He has given the opponent a solution
That's how the creator answers our prayers
A chance   A drift
A sunyata

Think of a thief who was supposed to pay a price
The mob were going to burn him to death
So they pour gasoline and light a match
But before he could burn down     they pour water on him
And he foams back to life
What would the thief say to Hermes?
What would his life become?

A prayer is not actually what you say when you're on your knees
A prayer is an answer to something
It is the door that opens when fire 'breaks a house
Jump or crawl?
The shores at sight    when the sea blows waves of terror
Sink        or swim?

The gods are not too far
They might be under our feet    in shoes
On our skins     A garment
They might be buried in our fists       a fight
Or in our heads    a reckon
But we must do something to make them hear us

But who answers our prayers?
For the ancients left us questions about their wisdom
They chose the same god for both thieves and travellers

The modern man is the answer
He creates his own prayers    and ties a rope to it
One an answer     the other a god
We're the prayers of the gods
An answer to our fellow humans.

About this poem

The poem says a prayer is not just about kneeling and saying the words. A prayer is an answer to something but you must have to do something to get that answer. It says whatever you do to survive, to get by, to win, is a prayer. And this means that we are the answers to our own prayers. Such human power

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Submitted by Youngrumi on July 06, 2021

Modified on May 01, 2023

1:34 min read
67

Quick analysis:

Scheme XXAB CXXDXXX EFGXC XXXHXIJ IAXXBH XXXEFD GJX BXXXX
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,535
Words 313
Stanzas 8
Stanza Lengths 4, 7, 5, 7, 6, 6, 3, 5

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    "A Prayer" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 18 Mar. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/104311/a-prayer>.

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