I found myself writing this after dreaming about an encounter with my father’s ghost, I spent that day reflecting on his suicide—when I was ten—and its far reaching impact on my life.
Father
For about six months, as a 12 year old, I experienced what I now know is referred to as “nuclear psychosis”, a fairly rare condition where the afflicted is so terrified of nuclear holocaust that he’s unable to function or sleep. At the time, I lived in a residential home called Hillsides. I include a link to their site only because it was the one residential home I lived in as a child where I wasn’t subjected to some kind of abuse.
What’s interesting also is that it has always seemed to me that the nearer I am to Los Angeles in general, the more I am unnerved, and fraught with visions and dreams of some kind of nuclear blast. In some dreams I have turned my head to the blast only to be vaporized a moment later by ‘the light’, and to wake with my heart pounding just about out my chest. In other dreams I’m far enough away to actually feel the heat-blast sere and melt my skin before waking. And throughout my life, the further I’ve been from Los Angeles, the less unnerved I’ve been, and the more such dreams (dreams only in these cases) take on an air of news reporting.
Whatever the reasons are behind these dreams, they have provided me with more than enough imagery to draw from for this poem, my 8th hybridanelle.
Recurring Nightmare
I’ve seen the City of Angels struck with pain,
her superstructures shattered from the sky,
her creatures flashed to shadows etched in stone.
I’ve seen flesh run like liquid from the bones,
screams vaporized to whispers in the throat
as burning cinders burst from countless frames.
Cloudscapes dissipated from the air;
a ruthless ring of fire seared the land,
her superstructures shattered from the sky.
Shrieks of terror sizzled on melting lips,
reduced to coals that sputtered in the heart;
I’ve seen flesh run like liquid from the bones
to bubble with the asphalt on the ground
beside the scorched remains of human forms;
a ruthless ring of fire seared the land,
blasting through neighborhoods and urban woods,
consuming all who ran or hid their face
as burning cinders burst from countless frames.
Cars twisted into myriad molten shapes;
the charred debris of towers rained down slag
beside the scorched remains of human forms.
Mothers pressed small babies to their ribs
which turned to embers in their futile arms;
I’ve seen flesh run like liquid from the bones
of fathers bent in vain across their young,
cremated by a lethal burst of light;
the charred debris of towers rained down slag
throughout the ardent ruins of brick and steel
where dead ambitions fumed upon their backs
as burning cinders burst from countless frames.
How could I smoke such visions from my mind?
I’ve seen the City of Angels struck with pain,
cremated by a lethal burst of light,
her creatures flashed to shadows etched in stone.
Don’t try to tell me these are merely dreams,
just troubled thoughts that haunt my sleeping brain;
I’ve seen flesh run like liquid from the bones
as burning cinders burst from countless frames.
Was I just traumatized by childhood events and re-experiencing that trauma through a fear of nuclear holocaust? Or was it something else—something more sinister? Only time will tell I suppose.
To my mind, postmodernism represents, above all, the birth of modern mediocrity, especially with regard to poetry. It has its points of interest, which I take and use in my own way and for my own purposes; but the rest I happily leave.
To the Postmodernist
your hands wave
in a sea of swaying hands
through cold dark waters
kelp shifting under swells
lost in formation
your voice howls out
against rocky cliffs
drowned in the crashing parade
of white-noise waves
lost in the drone
your words flash
briefly into view
on the tops of curling waves
a moments notice
lost in the tide
