the dead stay dead forever
and promises are never
more than a bluff
ripped up, stolen and rough
i’d be your teddy bear
with this eternal stare
but you’ve torn out the fluff
maybe’s never enough
yes, i’ve caught the disease
in the battles we seize
hearts are drowned and they freeze
down in dark memories
enemies in the wire
we’ve come under fire
come on take me higher
with every puff
maybe’s never enough
i cannot by the pale worm rivers
my coffin bed creep
upon the midnight day
suffer the blankets of maggot strewn dust
to bury my love away
I’m the queen of good intentions when my kingdom turns to dust
ancient pallisades and bastiens sinking in the molten crust
dazed reflections of tomorrow in the shadows left before
knotted hands are left to borrow until there is no more
infection sinking deeper than all else ever will
the climb gets only steeper until I am eternally still
Stayed at work from 7:40 am until 9:40 pm with a fifteen minute dinner break. The concert last night went off better than expected. The superintendent was there and didn’t even pretend I existed but exchanged congratulatory words with my coworker.
When planning the seating, three seats were saved for my coworkers who were playing a trio together, and I had to sit in the back behind the kids even though I was playing a piece, as well.
My coworker left before cleaning was done, and I arrived at work at 6:40 am today to make sure the piano was picked up safely.
I’m cradling a 2 liter bottle of Dr. Pepper and desperately waiting for the caffeine to kick in.
My coworker told me to bring my class of twenty something hyperactive freshmen down to pick up the food from last night’s reception, of which they would not be able to partake. They responded by briskly breaking one of the glass jar lids a parent had graciously let us borrow.
Today marks the beginning of the sequester.
Tiny injustices. Real pain.
Today I uncovered a betrayal. A betrayal of trust, confidence, decency and professionalism. My own mentor, someone in whom I confided my doubts and fears, thoughts, ideas and struggles fell for the bait tossed out by petty, lawless musicians about town. The actual betrayal began a long time ago, slowly. I sensed it seeping into my bones until, in one instant, I looked around only to find myself completely alone in the cold, cruel world, shards of ice dripping from my nose. A bureaucracy a vehicle constructed to make the world a better place, to educate and grow has done nothing but cripple and harden me to the only honest truth. There is no one on my side in the whole wide world, and my little cardboard walls will soon come a crumblin’ down.
This is not the face that greeted me at the door. A door I entered with hopes and full intentions to provide relief, a plan that was beaten and faded before it was ever unfurled.
With flagrant snarls and harsh accusations, my soul was beaten, my existence negated. The very thing I needed the most, snatched right out of my hands.
And here, now, where I am the most open, my spark snuffed out, my casings broken, the only person who needs to read this will not.
A refusal borne of haughty pride and venomous hate. There is more than enough time in the world to stare at a glowing box, but these words, this truth is not worth the time to slow down and understand. Unable to reach the one person I need the most to listen, I flee to the treetops. Maybe someone else will.
And I shall be judged, and I shall be viewed with consternation. I will be accused, and I will be the object of disdainful reproach. But never, not one single time in my life, will I ever be worth listening to.
I tumble into the words. An onslaught, downpour of thoughts taking hold of me, immobilizing. A few feet away, a confused bird sings a morning song in the crease of night. Too many street lights out here, not enough room for the stars.
Hugging my elbows close to my ribs, I jut my chin upwards and search for the moon, some kind of natural guiding light, finding only dirty clouds and floodlights.
At least the air out here still feels real, not circulating for hours upon hours through some obscure machine. Even the water these days is man made.
The sky is so big, I’d sit down on the grass to take more of it in if I could, but all I have is asphalt.
I’ll take what I can get.
Seated between the sternly measured parking lines, I can still feel the warmth of the earth seeping through from cracks and fissures where nature had clawed her way back out, gasping for air via unassuming green strands, warrior grass. With a pang of something like envy, I realize that I don’t feel much like a warrior tonight. Hedged tightly in the awkwardly sprawling apartment spaces between highways and church buildings, hotels and the golf course, fast-food chains and a field full of cows, I can feel the weight of the dissonance buckling in on me.
I put my head in my hands and sob softly, relieved and ashamed to feel human again. Decades of abuse, rejection and inadequacy wash over me, filling my lungs and throat with a vile, stinging burn. The breaths hiccup out of my double-chinned throat, but no one can see me out here. There are too many people around. I’ve always lived somewhere in the lines between irony. Not sick enough to be in the hospital, not well enough to adapt on my own. Not able to live at home, not able to survive away. Threatened always, but forced to protect, instead.
The lump in my throat has become too large to swallow, and I struggle to pull my weight off the ground. Too much weight and too little food. I crawl inside my apartment and shut the door, locking it before I slump over on the yellowed square tiles. My cat whines worriedly, and I clutch him to my chest, pushing my back against the wall. The closest thing I’ll get to a hug in a long, long time. Maybe years.
It staggers like a blow to the head. Swift, the recoil down past your shoulders. Ingrained like an embryonic dance. The fetal position, back hugs the wall. Or maybe the wall hugs you as the insurgence of chemicals leaks from a misfiring brain. Tears are all that’s left of you. And when I say you, I mean me. Misfiring. Like a colonial rifle with powder still left in the barrel, shards exploding into the fog before you even get to aim. The world pushing down on your lungs while tiny invisible thumbtacks stick notes all over your body. Reminders of who you really are. And who you aren’t. There are no voices but empty. There is no feeling but hurt. There is no safety but far, far away.
petty words beneath the blow
what lies beyond, i’ll never know
to each an end employment lies
like owls and nightjars in piquant skies
all of your vindictive speech
a point past malediction
will not my stone army breach
they don’t have my permission
twenty years of suffering
a decade more of healing
songs that aren’t buffering
creative flowers wilting
out, OUT! go you into the dark,
away from my sole haven
for i shall keep my one last spark
til i go with the raven.
Italo Calvino said: The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts. Describe the ghosts that live in this house:
Image credit: “love Don’t live here anymore…” – © 2009 Robb North – made available under Attribution 2.0 Generic
Images are usually what flash first and foremost in our thoughts as silent detailers of that monstrously complex world beyond us. Words are simply one more human tool, a project to categorize and tame a universe of tangible and unknowable things.
However, the musicality of this images’ title is what burst to the forefront of my consciousness.
‘Love don’t live here anymore’
Take that bitter, statement, the tang of truth rooted in action. Let it sink into the forgotten parts of you.
‘Love don’t live here anymore.’
Really? I wanted to shout this message at the top of my lungs, something so tintillatingly true for more than some demure cottage in the woods, but for an entire generation at large and lost in this intergalactic web, the fine tubing of faux interconnectedness. To put it more bluntly, I start singing the picture, through the lens of Estonian pop artist ad singer, Kerli.
Write about your strongest memory of heart-pounding belly-twisting nervousness: what caused the adrenaline? Was it justified? How did you respond?
Perhaps this question is a bit unfair. My earliest childhood memories involve giving speeches in community competitions, performing vocal solos at church and acting for hundreds at once. In many ways, I have been bred to perform, and part of the art of performance is the ability to control the body’s natural, primordial reaction to fear. In this way, my body almost always seems outwardly calm. Yet none of this is why the prompt may be considered unfair for me to answer.
You see, I have General Anxiety Disorder, so as soon as I open the door of my home- and sometimes a few paces before- I am instantly and incessantly overwhelmed by “heart-pounding, belly-twisting nervousness.” The blessing, and the curse, is that no one can tell but me.
I have been in several dangerous situations which, I suppose, would more aptly qualify for the meat and girth of this prompt. I suppose we should go with the less recent one because its sting has since palled and its uniqueness has yet to cease to amaze me.
It was a weeknight, one of those calm, sticky southern nights that makes you wish you could sleep forever, if only for the chance to escape the humidity. 3 am. There’s a certain magick, power in that hour, isn’t there? There was a slowly rising rumble from outside my window, a chaotic yelping not that different from what one might hear at a soccer game. Except this was no soccer game, and the insistence of the noise commingled with my groggy logical conclusions that, no, there should not be a game going on at this hour, I slowly, anciently creaked myself off the bed and towards the window. From the perch of my second story apartment, I could see a gathering of blobs across the parking lot, as I had not yet found my glasses, that I sensed were human beings. Angry human beings. The glasses came on, and with the clearer vision came a stronger focus on the words being uttered, nay, shouted across the asphalt lawn.
“I’ve got a gun!” A female voice belted out defiantly, instantly setting all my nerve endings on fire, “And I’ll shoot you. I will!”
Sounding tame, whipped, frantic, a male voice echoed across the surreal moment, “Dude, she’s serious. Dude!”
I immediately withdrew from my watchtower and, every inch of my body far colder than ice, dialed 911. A slightly stern but nonetheless amiable woman answered the line.
“911. What’s your emergency?”
I took a deep, adrenaline-curbing breath and spoke with a voice that sounded, to me, far calmer than the words they were uttering, “There’s a group of people in my neighborhood arguing. And the lady said she had a gun.”
Probingly, testing me, the respondent asked, “Did you see the gun?”
“No, she’s on the other side of the parking lot from me.”
“Are there any police there already?”
“No, not that I can see.”
“Are the people still standing there?”
“Yes.”
Then she asked for the name of my apartment complex, and all I could do was sit and wait. Fifteen urgent minutes slipped by, and the crowd gradually dispersed to a location somewhere outside of my view. Ten minutes after that, a lone police car came yawning into the turnabout and, seeing nothing, just as slowly rolled away.
we’re heading for a storm
the sky’s a gleaming and glinting
and churning is the sea
that coils inside of me
i’m breaking out of form
my thoughts bleeding and reckless
and churning is the sea
that boils inside of me
and now i must confess
my sanity is sliding
all harmful words colliding
the foam’s a gleaming and glinting
and churning in the sea
that drowns inside of me
we do not want for air
when trapped inside of there
for lonely is the sea
that murders all of me
and floating, we drift onward
with hearts sunk over starboard
and churning in the sea
that swallows all of me
ǝƃɐɯı ɹoɹɹıɯ ɹnoʎ ɯɐ ı
ǝlıƃɐɹɟ ǝɹoɯ puɐ ǝɹnʇɐıuıɯ uı ǝpɐɯ
ǝʌol ɹnoʎ llɐ ɥʇıʍ ǝʌol ı ʇnq
uıɐd ɹnoʎ llɐ uı ǝɹɐɥs ı
sǝʞɐʇsıɯ ʍǝu ƃuıʞɐɯ
sǝʞɐʇsıɯ ʍǝu ƃuıʞɐɯ
uıɐd ɹnoʎ llɐ uı ǝɹɐɥs ı
ǝʌol ɹnoʎ llɐ ɥʇıʍ ǝʌol ı ʇnq
ǝlıƃɐɹɟ ǝɹoɯ puɐ ǝɹnʇɐıuıɯ uı ǝpɐɯ
ǝƃɐɯı ɹoɹɹıɯ ɹnoʎ ɯɐ ı
i am your mirror image
made in miniature and more fragile
but i love with all your love
i share in all your pain
making new mistakes
making new mistakes
i share in all your pain
but i love with all your love
made in miniature and more fragile
i am your mirror image
un grito sangria
del crepusculo de mi mente
toca en la puerta de noche
con un cancion media tonto
when the cough syrup died
and bled its sticky red blood
red, red all over
all over my lovely blue carpet
where only hours before
i lay huddled in a mass
messy mass of tears
tears and pain
when the cough syrup died
i knew
just like when she hit me
hit me like a child
hard, hard
many times the pain
from the bones inside out
from her hands outside in
from the brain, from the soul
from a life out of control
she’s out of my control
i knew
something died in me, too
and i knew, and i knew
and i knew
I am for an art that has the power to knock your socks off. I am for poetry that already has. Author, musician, educator, scatter brain. Proudly serving the global community since 1984.
Catch Some Wide Eye 