They ask for money daily now;
horrid how principles rain ruin,
hinder purpose, drain the coffers.
I give one more quick donation;
ten dollars, freely with sadness
…..and hope. We have a little left
this month, but the donut hole looms,
a snare that could snap both bone and will.
Always the palpable dread turning behind
my smile or frown; I’m the victim in the
horror film that feels the sentient house’s
aura on approach, the foreboding, the angst.
Behind the pulled shade she waits to inform,
throwing looks, crying distrust of even me,
her tenaculum snared offspring. I come to do
her bidding grudgingly; a calloused hearted son.
I’ve never learned: I attempt to reason, to plea,
but logic is dead in her house, killed by disease
which mints lies and villains as readily
as harsh light cast shadows onto a wall.
She’s not the one needing help she warns,
but the others and, yes, me too, if I think so!
So absolute in her anger…I wish it were true;
this helplessness precludes affection.
The body fails the mind even before
the last moment cast consciousness to where
it goes. Forget disease, the slippery tub;
muscle slackens or turns to stone, wrought hard
by pain from errant bone, the ear, the eye
can fail from use , the joints refuse, the lungs
rebel; the parts unite to fight for warmth,
for softer, for a peace, stasis, for time.
The will can be hard hit by pain and dreams
of youth deferred until can fade or slink
away hardly noticed or lamented.
But yet, a mountain bald, a topless sky
invites just me to come and see a bit
of truth, hidden, held close along a ledge
secured by pine. A sweaty climb along
the bluff, a grunt of pain a pill can not
relieve, and now I strain to see tiny
iris, cristata; blooming blue and gold
and white so pure that God is real,
at least, worth consideration.
Atop the bald, a boulder makes a bed
of soothing heat to draw fatigue away,
and leave a space in which a breeze warm with
the smell of pine needles can ease my hurt.
This poem comes from 2002 and rings even more true today than ten years ago. This is not about remorse, self-pity or even ageing, but rather the soothing power and joy that the natural world can provide, at least temporarily, if a person is so incline to make an effort to see the wonders that exist.
There were footsteps outside my door last night;
loose gravel crunched, there was a catch in a gait.
Something stood squinting in the darkness
checking a number or matching a date.
My heart ran rampant, throbbing, pumping dread;
an emptying slash…..now a cavernous hollow.
Opened now……anti-being knows my smell;
when will it beckon for me to follow?
I was actually 40 before I seriously considered and accepted the concept of mortality. I awoke in the middle of the night with the most horrid feeling which haunted me for days. This poem was an effort many, many years ago to put words to it. This feeling initiated the clichéd “mid-life crisis” which I quickly and completely recovered from…I’m now content, accepting and at ease.
Lured to the streets of a lay-over city,
a place foreign to my soul, a mob
of askant stares, titillated expectancy,
shrill hawking of flesh and wares,
and placards enticing, promising all;
I walked halls narrowed by sideshow trite:
latex attempts at grotesquerie, cast horrors,
a two-headed this and a five legged that,
the longest, thinnest, the nastiest things.
Quickly contrite, I sought an out-door,
but down-cast eyes led me astray into
the dim, sad light of a smaller corridor.
Each bottle hovered in its own alcove.
Suspended by and washed by, so slow,
a stainless, sterile sluice, a gentle sate,
each “malfeasant of nature” each
“quirk of fate” slept in its own forever.
Each baby was lite for affect and show:
a stunted webbed limb, a bulbous head,
a truncated body without appendage,
a Cyclops, a hermaphrodite, a Hydra;
each a double handful of sorrow for show.
By what were these unions frowned upon:
a gene glitch run rampant, toxicosis,
a gods punishment, or mans violence?
A cause cries for blame for through
the particled sate a delicate eyelid,
a perfect toe, alludes to original joy,
though fleeting, of a life proposed
but not realized or ordained, but taken.
Who or what along the blade of existence
nixed this one or that one or that?
What were their sins condemning them
to naked display with stitched scars
of exploration visible to see along
the palest of blood freed flesh?
And, where were their souls? Were they
those vague entities of phosphorescent
sheen locked in jars;…..fireflies
snatched from night’s vitrine, stuffed
beneath blankets in trunks in darken rooms?
The phrases, “malfesasant of nature” and “quirk of fate” were taken from a poem by Robert Penn Warren. I can not locate my copy of his collected works to give the poems title. The origin of the idea is somewhat vague in my memory, but I believe it came from reading somewhere, several years ago, that some museum or commercial enterprise had put on a public display of deformed fetuses for whatever reason I can’t remember. Needless to say, this bit of information affected me profoundly as I have worked on this poem over several years. It is time to let it go.
Daylight, unforgiving and true,
caught my hands at ease, flat,
unflatteringly flat, upon my knees.
Loosely applied over blue-veined
rivers and tendon ridges, a pliant
skin reveals a history of scars:
puckered, punctured stars, sliced
crescents, rude tears and gouges
all ungulate in a lighter hue over
blue-veined rivers and tendon ridges.
A skinscape of a crazed topographer;
a delineation of years of labor,
of incidences with sharp edges,
of inabilities, and worst, inattention,
of flailing arms and careless hands;
hands with slender fingers
better spread across opened pages
gently tapping, counting, calling out the joy.
Belated Words 