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The Seekers

I am not currently working on any project poems, and I don’t plan to start one any time soon. Hopefully this means my mental space will be freed up for more spontaneous writes such as this:

The Seekers

For as long as I can remember
I’ve watched them grope,
fumbling through dark places
over jagged, uneven surfaces.

I’ve watched them wander long
grey corridors, faces gaunt,
shoulders slouching faded sighs,
feet reechoing short, tired scuffs.

I’ve seen their distorted figures
through stain glass windows, heads
bowed, arms raised, faces creased
with longing for the slightest sign.

I’ve even seen them half concealed
by timbers on their way to peaks
and rivers to seek out some hidden
solace, some priceless psychic gem.

But, somehow I think it’s up there,
slipping between the stars, bits
and pieces sometimes flaring bright
streaks of insight within the night.

This was sparked more by a feeling than a thought. The feeling was invoked by a poem I read in a Facebook group, though I can no longer recall the poem or what it was about. Four of the five stanzas actually formed very quickly, but it didn’t feel finished, so I put it aside for a while. This was a few months back.

Recently I looked at it again and just kind of knew where and what the missing stanza should be and then it was done. Funny how that works.

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Boxcars

During my early 20s I was friends with a man who was also one of the staff who worked at the last residential home I lived in as a teen—not long before I ran away. I was still pretty feral in those days, so I eventually ended up damaging the relationship beyond repair and never saw or heard from him again.

But before this happened he passed on a piece of wisdom to me during a time when I really needed to hear it that involved a new way of looking at and dealing with my thoughts—seriously dark thoughts and intentions that absorbed a great deal of mental space in those days:

Boxcars

A steel-bell clamor echoes through the air
in time with frenzied flashes warning red;
the long arm of the crossing gate is down;
behind it boxcars rumble down the rails.

Some are old, the corrugated frames
bleed rustic patterns through the faded paint.
Some are new, unblemished angles gleam
the colors of a harvest fresh from field.

The doors gape wide, revealing vivid worlds
that move within the spaces as they pass,
each one reflecting back a hope, a fear,
a grim regret, a powerful desire.

The spacious confines beckon one by one—
the broken promises, the lasting doubts,
the things that could have been, the grand designs—
the vengeful plans that ache within the heart.

The cars move slowly—such that if you ran,
you could with little trouble hop aboard
and there within the confines of a thought
be carried off away to who-knows-where.

Nearby a tunnel opens to a plane
of deep uncertainty; it is from here
the many cars emerge to clangor by
and disappear around a far off bend.

I’ve been here many times throughout the years,
the way ahead obscured by vagaries
that mesmerize the mind with strange allure
and goad the impetus to jump aboard.

Sometimes a car would pass reflecting back
distorted visions holding such appeal
the urge to run and climb aboard would quell
all sensibility and self control.

Then suddenly I’d find myself within
a lucid fancy on that train of thought,
so thoroughly immersed in reverie
I soon lost sight of where I was or went.

And drifting through the shadows of a dream
of what could be or what there might have been—
or some depraved indulgence deep within—
I found myself displaced from all that is.

And only after hours, days, or weeks
would I regain my senses and return
to where I was before I leapt aboard
whatever fancy lured me from my path.

But through the years I’ve learned to let them pass,
allowing each to come and each to go
until once more the way ahead is clear,
the red caboose diminishing from view.

What he told me was simple: Instead of denying or rebuking the thoughts that troubled me, allow them to come, and then allow them to go—like the boxcars on a freight train at a train crossing. Let them come; let them go. Don’t hop on and get taken for a ride.

It took a while—many years in fact—but I worked at it and gradually got better at this practice. It helped a lot when I one day realized that the process of rebuking and trying to deny the thoughts and feelings that troubled me was also a form of hopping aboard.

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Broken

Today is the anniversary of my father’s suicide. He used his trousers to strangle himself to death early in the morning 40 years ago today while being held overnight in the Monterey City jail’s drunk tank in California.

For most of my life, probably starting the very next year after his death, I forgot what day he died on. But, every June I’d begin to destabilize emotionally in various ways and this would come to a head by the end of the second week of July with some kind of epic breakdown—all without my remembering his death date.

Last year, on July 13th, a Monday—he died on a Monday—I suddenly remembered as my shift ended at work that he used to suffocate me in my sleep. This psychopath would cup his big hand over my little face in my sleep, closing off my airway entirely, so that I woke up in a panic, clawing and freaked out, until I passed back out again. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I felt his hand, I felt the absolute terror and helplessness of waking to suffocation, and I gasped and gasped for air with this vivid memory until I hyperventilated my way into the ER.

Why did he do this? I don’t fucking know. No-one in my family will even verify this memory, including my sister who has told me many times over the years that he would hold my jaw closed in my sleep when I would grind my teeth—which she now denies ever telling me. But this isn’t the resurfaced memory anyway. The intent was clearly to suffocate me unconscious, and the trauma surrounding this abuse is extreme and ongoing.

So, in memory of my father’s 40th deathaversary:

Broken

You were a broken man…
            I know this.

And though you have long since
                  turned to ash
      your broken hand still rests
            upon my shoulders.

In those days I had no way
                  to understand you
      except as something
            to fear,

                        and terribly so.

When you were gone—
                  the moment I knew—
            I felt relief.
      Yet your touch remained.

When you were gone—
            the moment I understood—
                  I felt gripping loss,
      your grip finally loosened.

When you were gone—
      the moment I grasped its meaning—
                  I felt searing guilt.
            Your rage had been extinguished,

                        and could burn no more.

And when you were gone,
            I never once wondered why
      you never came to say goodbye
                  somewhere in my dreams.

                                    Yet
                        I still could feel
            the broken weight of your hand
      pressing, squeezing, clawing
                              somewhere in my spirit.

You were a broken man…
            And you broke your small boy
                  with the terrible, violent weight
      of your broken hand,

            a touch that reaches still—
                        like the sting of cigarette smoke—
                  from the dreaming.

So, yes, another cathartic poem. I swore some years back that I’d use poetry more for artistic, highfalutin endeavors. Because, you know, I’d like to be a more serious, highfalutin poet. But, whatever. I’m a person and I’ve been through a lot.

In the end I should consider that poetry saved my life as a teen. So maybe catharsis is also a part of giving back to the spirit of this muse.

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One more breath

Sometimes I start writing a poem based on a feeling that I don’t really know how to express. And, here even with the poem written, I’m still not certain what the feeling was that inspired it. Though the poem focuses on the decision to not commit suicide throughout my life, this doesn’t really represent the feeling from which it began.

One more breath

My life was over…
     Rivers of poison flowed through
          my veins and every fiber of being

My spirit was dark with dread,
     insurmountable dread, dread instilled
          by willful neglect, countless curses,
               endless threats and blows.

A thing like strychnine or a cobra’s venom
     coursed throughout my thoughts,
          through the depths of my psyche,
               my subtle form and corrupted even
                    the shattered crystal mist of my
                                                       soul.

There was no life support for a sickness
     such as this, where the light within
          grew so dim and obscured it could
               no longer be seen, or even felt.

I wanted only to live a moment more,
     so I took in a breath and cried to the stars,
          “Then all I ask is you take from me
               this fear of dying.”
                         And the moment passed.

I wanted only to live for one more day,
     so I screamed out by the tireless river,
          almost in rage, “Then all I ask is
               you take from me this one terror.”
                         And the night passed.

Again and again I found myself with no
     divider yearning to swerve into bright
          headlights. Again and again I found
               myself on top of cliffs yearning
                    to fling myself from sorrow.
                              And the moments passed.

          There was no reason to believe
               in a life beyond tomorrow,
                    today,
                         or even the moment…

          But here I am
               looking back on yesterdays,
                    yesteryears,
                         decades

          that never should have been.
               And for the moment,
                    that yearning has passed
                         yet again.

So, what was feeling? I’m sure it’s woven into the subtext somewhere. If I had to guess, maybe it’s a sort of wonderment that I’m still alive despite feeling so undeserving of life overall. Or, maybe it’s this ever-present sense of dismay and unease at the fact that this urge or desire to be done with life along with the associated thought processes—the poison—still remains.

Maybe it’s both.

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The Two Gods

The idea for this poem goes back to my early 20s—more than half a lifetime ago. I guess it took me a while to find the brain-space to flush it out.

The Two Gods

The Concrete God and the Abstract God sat down one day for tea
to talk about affairs of fate and solemn mysteries.

“They named this city after me,” The Concrete God began.
“There rising at its center looms my monument by man.

“Night and day they praise my name within the vaulted hall,
beseeching after every kind of blessing great and small.”

The Abstract God was unimpressed by what was said, yet smiled,
“This tea is quite delicious, and the evening air is mild.”

“And what of you,” the Concrete God went on, “Who praises you?
Where are your names reechoed up by altar, mat or pew?”

The Abstract God drank down another sip of tea and gazed
across the sprawling cityscape where spires loomed in haze,

the ones to which the Concrete God referred wherein his name
reverberates from ancient walls of stone with high acclaim.

The Concrete God raised prying eyes, still waiting for reply;
the Abstract God took in a breath and started with a sigh,

“Those who know me also know there is no name for me.
I am the breeze that bends the grass and moves the canopy;

I am the light that shimmers through between the shifting leaves,
the rumpling sound that rises up where wandering waters weave.”

The Concrete God now took a sip and pondered what was said;
And then, “No name! It seems to me the nameless are the dead.”

“Perhaps,” the Abstract God replied, “if you are bound to name,
its absence may induce a state that’s very much the same.

“But I have been since long before the conscious thought occurred
to name each thing the mind perceives or manifests with words.”

“But surely there’s a name for you,” the Concrete God appealed,
“for humankind is wont to name whatever is revealed.”

“They name the things they see and feel,” the Abstract God returned,
“but I exist beyond the reach of what can be discerned.

“They name the grass; they name the leaf; they name the brook and breeze;
they name the very thoughts they think; but I am none of these.”

The Concrete God looked down his nose, “And yet I heard you say
that there are those who know you here among the living clay.”

“Indeed,” the Abstract God again, “but as I said before,
they also know I have no name to worship and adore.”

“And so the ones who come to know me simply let it rest,
an understanding freed from nouns embedded in the breast.”

The Concrete God threw up his hands, “This makes no sense at all—
to be an entity that’s known but none can ever call.”

“Indeed,” the Abstract God agreed, “for reason cannot name
a thing beyond the reach of thought to give it form and frame.”

“Alright,” the Concrete God again, “but surely there are those
who bind their understanding to a name they can depose.”

“There are, my Friend,” the Abstract God said gently. “But, you see,
this is precisely just the way it is you came to be.”

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Specter

I’ve been seeing a therapist off and on over the past couple of years. My goal was to try to make sense of an unnamed trauma that has had a powerful influence on my state of mind and emotion for as far back as I can remember.

The work we did was forensic in nature, looking at what I do know and can remember of my life through the lens of various schools of psychology. It was attachment theory that led somewhere, as this revealed that I likely suffered extreme neglect during my first 3 years of life. I’m unable to verify this, however, because family who still live exist in a state of perpetual attempts to gaslight and deny.

Specter

She made me …
  from filaments of stardust
    mixed with the loess
      of broken dreams

She bore me …
  stark into the light of rage
    and left me naked, crying
      deep in an empty well

She gave me …
  poison fruit from a withered tree
    and i ate, having lost all hope
      of anything more

She made me …
  the imago of her darkest dread
    an ever present specter looming
      deep within her afterthought