RA Student Literary Series: A Time To Pay

A time to pay | Mark Horn

I’m mentally hurt

and emotionally scarred-

I pray God! help so the sickness

doesn’t go to my heart!

I can tell that you can hear me,

but the emotion’s not there.

Genocidal, talk to Jehovah,

when it hurts, you know life ain’t fair.

Look to the heavens and I feel like

am I asking the most?-

Self sacrifice shut me out and

Made me talk to the ghost.

Took the smoke, like a cigarette,

just like cancer it burns,

All that I see is death

and then wait on my turn.

Father! Take off the hurt.

Take off my sin.

I’m addicted to the drama.

Will it curse me again?

Feel the rage of insanity,

such rage, makin’ me sink,

Because I came up hard,

it’s always makin’ me think.

"Mark is a poet. His verses help him process his feelings and thoughts. This poem, 'A Time to Pay', shares hurt. Mark's grandmother is in his heart, so the disease inside her threatens to infect Mark's mind and emotions, too. He joins her battle against the disease by taking a time to pray directly to God.

One image, if I may, especially stands out to me as insightful. In a stanza reminiscent of the Preacher's 'vanity of vanity', cancer burns like a cigarette shrinking life into ash and vapor. This connection between cancer and a cigarette helps Mark describe mental and emotional effects of cancer that the Surgeon General's warning could never fully list. More importantly, just like Solomon asking God for wisdom, Mark is seeking an Everlasting Rock where there is a love that's stronger than all deaths.

Read the poem. Join Mark in prayer for his grandmother. Join Mark's grandmother in prayers for him and for his family. Mark's honest soul hurts from the cancer his grandmother feels, so our whole family at Restoration hurts and prays with him, too. After all, our Lord Jesus Christ broke his body for us all and scarred his hands to intercede before the Father for our souls."

• David Shaw, RA English Department