Into the Night I Go in Struggle

I feel ill in the deepest sense of the word,
watching people use each other, abuse
one another and in the end find that dark place
inside of us is no more closer to being filled.
I have grown weary watching person after
person fade into someplace terrible, watching
as people make promises and break them,
fall in love and fall out, live and die and
experience all those things that make life
a divine comedy.

So many people in my life I watch wander,
and it makes me feel ill because I cannot
separate from the trials of others. They all
hurt me in some terrible way because I find
humanity to be in need of sympathy.
And so when my companions moan, and
find themselves in someplace terrible, I find
myself at their side, grieving for them.
The typical act of my Arch Angel namesake
I watch and weep as another soul is damned
begging God to please let this one live,
let this one love, let this one see.

This has been the way of the world for some
time, and many of us at best manage to find
distractions, not because life is at its core
horrible. I can attest to the fact that it
isn't the case.
But sometimes life is more than we can handle
people are more than we can handle
and the best we can manage is to pray,
to hope that God somewhere hears our
sorrow, and finds reason to look back
with compassion.

What does this author want.
I suppose I should be clear.
Not ask in the cosmic sense, though we
all know that that is the only way that feels
appropriate.
But how do we bring ourselves to speak
the truth about our lives and the people in it
without at once finding ourselves marooned
on the island of our own creation.
To speak the truth is to admit that life is hard
but more than that to admit that life is painful
and that sometimes we have little control
over it.

Such a revelation is a bitter pill to swallow,
and I want to much to be able to forget, to
separate from the world in the best ways that
I can find. But the acts of another, those we
love more than life itself, are so hard to ignore
especially when they are far away.