Please No More Poem by Elena Plotkin

And so he wrote it on the message board,
A simple message for the Almighty Lord,
'Please God, who I worship and adore,
Please all merciful God, please no more! '
I saw it there upon the message board,
A simple message for the Almighty Lord,
I ventured to ask the owner of the store,
'Who wrote this message of ‘No More? ''
'A man came by here, a drifter, a bum
down in his luck, desperate, and glum.'
'Why keep it there? ' I dare then to ask,
'I cannot bare to do this simple task,
By all means do it yourself if you wish,
Some motions of the hand swish, swish, swish,
And the words will at last all disappear,
But first this much I feel you must hear,
Before that desperate man left my store,
I asked him what he meant by ‘No more, '
His reply was neither too fast nor too slow,
It was forthright, sincere, and full of woe,
‘Please God no more sickness; no more death,
I ask for others not just myself.
Please no more famine; please no more drought,
It's not just me I am thinking about.
Please no more tornadoes, quakes, and flood,
We are all just made of flesh and blood.
Please no more murder, rape, or abuse.
We all have some purpose and some use.
Please God, who I worship and adore,
Please all merciful God, please no more! ''
And after the owner said this to me,
the board's eraser he handed to me.
Some motions of the hand swish, swish, swish
But how can I erase that man's one wish?
So I handed the eraser back,
and thanked the owner for his great tact.
I said my goodbye and left that store,
I came home and looked at my front door,
Took a paper, a pen and wrote it down,
the very same words I read back in town,
‘Please God, who I worship and adore,
Please all merciful God, please no more! '
And as I took tape and stuck the paper on,
I knew that I wasn't the only one
who took a paper and wrote it down.
It couldn't just be me and this one town.

(C)2013 Copyright Elena Plotkin