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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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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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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

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The Outline

Since the mid 2000s, I’ve more or less tried to avoid using poetry to process traumas and strong emotions. This decision was inspired by a friend and mentor who expressed open disdain for such poetry. I suppose, since I was still working through issues of neglect and abandonment from my childhood, I hoped this would his win his approval. But that’s another story.

I think that—slowly, dimly—I’m beginning to realize that for me using poetry to process personal traumas, experiences, and strong emotions is not only essential to my process of working through the deep stuff and eventually moving forward, but to my overall inspiration to produce new material. Now, where I’ve actively tried to resist urges to use poetry to process my traumas, I’m working to move in the other direction.

The Outline

All around
                                   a storm.

                    Clouds
                              swirling.

               Winds
                          howling.

     Leaves
                    blowing.

          Walls
               creaking.
 

Through the window
          deep in the turbid havoc
     distorted by patterns of rain
               and side-blown rivulets

a thing moves massive
          amid black coiling clouds
     outlined only in part
               by flashes of light

                         and thunder.
 

          And there it is
               the Monster
     outlined in grainy gritty
                    shades of gray.

          The doctor points
               talks of radiation
     chemo and surgeries…
                    I blink back fears

          and struggle with all
               my might to see
     beyond reverberating peals
                    of terror and loss.

Of course, the storm is a metaphor for the emotional chaos stirred up by the diagnosis of cancer in a loved one. The outline in the storm adumbrated by flashes of light is metaphor for the image of the mass itself produced by scans—which basically use various kinds of flashes of light to produce the image, from X-rays to electromagnetism.

It’s been about two and a half years now since sitting in doctor’s offices with my wife going over scans and asking questions between long, strained attempts to breathe. And although my wife has been in remission for a couple of years at this point, I think it’s safe to say that I’m still traumatized by the experience of it all, hence this little bit of psychotherapeutic personal poetic trauma processing.

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Event Horizon

I am hoping to get back into the swing of things when it comes to producing poems. For now I’m setting myself the goal of writing and posting one poem each month. If I can manage this, then I’ll look at stepping it up from there.

As I try to return to the habit of writing, I find that most of what occupies my creative thoughts is the experience of dealing with my wife’s cancer. As of now, she’s been in remission for two years—a miracle in itself to be sure. But no matter how long we both may live, I’ll never forget the experience of being caught within the gravity well of that singular tumor and forcing ourselves to go about each day within its event horizon.

Event Horizon

Despite the aching crawl of time,
         I wake each day
               from fitful sleep,
      stumble to the car,
                  and drive to work.

      Despite the crushing pressure
            of uncertainty,
   we take our son to preschool,
         to the park to play,
               and ready him for bed.

Despite the all-consuming darkness
   that haunts every thought,
         we buy groceries,
               prepare our meals,
      and pay the bills.

The diagnosis was unexpected—
            I suppose it always is.
      In but a moment, all
   forward momentum was lost
         and we found ourselves
            locked in the fathomless
                     grip of a tumor.

         And yet despite
               the overwhelming gravity,
      we continue on and
                  go about our lives
            just inside the event horizon
                        of oblivion.

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The Survivor

It is common for those who survive disasters—especially lone survivors—to feel a sense of guilt about it. Maybe this comes from feeling like someone among those who died in the disaster would have been more deserving of that second chance. Maybe this exacerbates a sense of worthlessness that already lurked within. Whatever the case, not all disasters are created equal, though the guilt of having survived is just as poignant.

The Survivor

It was not a train wreck. The car
didn’t screech, slow, tilt and roll,
passengers sent flying throughout
the cabin with their tablets,
purses and cell phones. There
was no shattered glass, no screams,
no sudden eerie silence amid
cracked skulls, broken bones
and twisted frames of steel—
                                 But I survived.
                 I don’t know how.

It was not a plane crash.
There was no sudden sensation
of lost momentum, no jarring
thrusts up, down and sideways.
The captain never broke over
the intercom in strained, measured
tones, “Brace for impact.”
I never tucked my head
between cramped knees
and waited for that last, terrible jolt—
                                 But I survived.
                 I don’t know why.

It was not a shipwreck. A massive
rogue wave never folded out
from the wake, snapping untold
fathoms against the wide, blue-gray
hull—covered orange lifeboat ripped
away. Steel plates never buckled
abeam at the blow, seams splitting
abreast open seas. Water never
flooded the holds, one by one,
as gunwales leaned in slow motion
down to drink in the surf.
                                 But I survived.
                 I don’t understand.
 

It was the snap of his belt, the back
of his hand, holes gaping jagged
rage from the walls, a relentless
unpredictable fury that sent my soul
crashing around in the tumbling
train car of never-ending terror.
                                 Yet I persisted,
       and learned to curb his rage.

It was the bullwhip crack of her
tongue, the icy black slash of her
words, the voracious canine rip
of her blame, an ever present hair-
raising resentment that plunged all
self-esteem headlong into sorrow.
                                 Yet I endured,
       and learned to quell her malice.

It was an ocean of apathy where just
beneath the steady rise and fall
of visceral uncertainty lurked
sudden swells of violence that rose
and smashed through the wide hull
of sanity, sinking always again what
dim hope there was into darkness.
                                 Yet I emerged,
       and learned to calm my unrest.

The final three stanzas treat on the three parents of my childhood. First, my father, physically and psychologically abusive, who committed suicide when I was 10. Next, my mother, a venomous, vindictive, emotionally damaging woman with a form of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy that involved psychiatrists instead of medical doctors. The last was the Los Angeles County Juvenile Courts, who took custody of me at the age of 12, placing me in one abusive environment after another until I ran away and stayed away at age 15.

I have always felt like someone who has survived a catastrophic event on the order of at least a plane crash or shipwreck. Or maybe on the order of an major earthquake or tsunami. Or perhaps on the order of something even more catastrophic. For this was not a single event that occurred only once; it was ongoing and systemic abuse across the entire span of my childhood. And though running away at 15 freed me from the clutches of the abusers, there is never really freedom from the effects of the abuse itself. That must be dealt with and addressed every day for the rest of ones life.

The survivor of childhood abuse must learn to survive all over again every single day. In some cases, the survivor may even begin to show signs of thriving in spite of it all.

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Dislodged

Last year I bought a journaling application for my PC that I planned to use for drumming up ideas for poems and for logging lines and fragments that could later be expanded upon. The seed lines for this poem were among the last entries made in the journal prior to my finding out in November that my wife has cancer.

Dislodged

Your raucous call is the sound
    of an old friend knocking
        at the door. One not seen
                    in many years.

    I look up and my lungs fill
        with long sighs of affection
as your broad black wings
    flurry lightly north and west.

        Where you go each day
    the moment daylight pulls
your roosts from shadow,
                    I do not know.

    I cannot follow your omens
over street signs and power lines,
        over the tired old grid
    of run-down homes and businesses,

over the brick, wood, and chain-link
    fences that partition every block.
        Yet I swear my heart lifts from its
                    white cage and chases after,

    leaving me just a little empty.
        Sometimes I think you carry
my spirit to me. Sometimes
    it seems you carry it away.

        We are bound, and I know
    you know. Karma is a twisted thing,
involuted with the daily
                    struggle to survive,

    the ancient force of past being
that somehow led to now, and every
        hidden longing that forever
    tugs at my soul.

Sometimes a feather drifts down
    and settles by the curb. Maybe
        I am that feather.
                    Maybe long ago

    I was dislodged from the body
        of my flock and left behind
to settle into the sod. Maybe I am
    fallen feather become man,

        forever grounded, looking on
    as black wings call with stern regard
from beyond the constricting ache
                    of warehouse walls.

I work the night shift at a group home for at-risk teens. This home is in a renovated warehouse in a neighborhood that is zoned for both businesses and residences. Before waking the kids in the morning, I’ll gather my things and take them out to my car, which I park in a gated courtyard. During those times of the year when this coincides with nautical dawn, a massive storytelling of ravens will fly directly overhead.

I’ll hang out and watch until the last straggler flies by, then I’ll go inside. A lot of them will tilt their heads sideways as they pass, making direct eye contact. Once in a while one or two will land on the top of the building, perching at the edge to watch and sometimes interact with me before continuing on. No matter my mood, I’m always in better spirits after spending a few moments with these creatures.

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Talking with Angels

I wrote this a few years ago as a prose comment to a Facebook post. I recently stumbled across it again when Facebook showed me the old post as a “memory.” Part of the dialog that inspired this response involved a discussion wherein I was asked to explain what I think angels are. I responded saying, “Any life affirming entity. Today I talked with a number of them,” and then the poem.

Talking with Angels

Today I talked to the angels.
                       A lot of them.

They thrust into the air
         and took the horizon.

They gathered above peaks
               in lenticular folds.

They congregated whispers
        along rocky slopes and
     they clustered long sips
            from canyon creeks.

Their stony gaze bouldered
      from mountainsides and
   they rose in meditation
              from valley floors.

Today I talked with the angels,
        and they sang me songs
                 I have not heard
    in very a long time.

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Riptide

A lot has happened over the past few weeks. But, first the poem, then the news.

Riptide

I used to bodysurf.
It was years ago, as a child.

I lived not far from white sands
    and long curling waves,
from sailboats and oil tankers
that loomed like quiet phantoms
at the liquid edge of the world.

Wearing dark blue trunks,
I would wade in through broken
waves until the brine lapped
softly against my chin.
As whitewater neared, the sea
would drop just low enough that
I could push off and join
the tumult, turned briefly
into a crude, knobby surfboard
    sliding amid the swell
until at last my trunks scooped up
    a little sand, and I found
myself beached between worlds.

Once, while waiting for just
the right wave, I bent my knees
and dropped below one not quite
    big enough, pushed up
to the higher water behind it, and
came down on absolutely nothing.

The sand was gone.

I extended one leg, toes spread
down to find it, but all I could feel
was grit rushing around my foot,
    my ankle, and shin.

There was a moment of uncertainty,
as if the wily sea were merely playing
a practical joke, then on instinct
I began to swim toward shore
where I could once again find sand
to stand on. But, I went the wrong way,
swimming forward, my body slid
back toward those distant ships, limbs
useless as seaweed on the wake.

The joke was over. Fear flashed
electric through my limbs. I sprinted,
kicking and stroking with all my might,
eyes wild and white, face pale, arms
and legs weakening until at last they
turned flaccid and ghostly as jellyfish.

Strength spent, I gasped for air
as my chin dipped into that salty,
half-lit world. And with that air
I choked and gulped at the sea.

Somewhere in the watery depths
of my soul, I began to accept this fate.
I began to accept that I now would join
and merge with the great abyss forever,
that maybe I would find my father there
in the cold blue depths, that the simple
    joys of breath were at an end.

Then, suddenly, a bright orange buoy
splashed near and I heard a voice
howl, “Grab the buoy! Grab the buoy!”

It was just out of reach, and I was still
being pulled out to sea. But I saw him,
a muscular man in glaring orange
    trunks waste deep with fear
in his eyes—he saw me, a lifeguard.
And seeing I could not reach the buoy,
with one great snap of his wrist,
whipped it out of the water back
to his hands. Like a quarterback
from heaven, he heaved back
and hurled that orange buoy as if
he meant to land it beyond the horizon.

It landed just past my head, and with
one feeble hand, I grabbed hold.
My body lifted horizontal as the rope
pulled taught, and for the first time
I could feel current rushing past
every inch of skin. My other feeble
hand took hold and the man full
of muscles reeled me in against
that all consuming tide until I flapped
and flopped onto dry sand, crying.

    I remember looking back
on that great ocean, waves weaving
docile patterns onto the shore,
        shaking,
heart hollow with fear and dread.

When the doctor came in, he asked
me to remove my sunglasses. His
face was granite. He said he wanted
to see my eyes. In that moment,
I came down on nothing and began
            to tread uncertainty.

I removed my glasses, and he began
to tell me about your procedure, tilting
his head forward as he tracked my eyes.
I toed for sand as he talked of polyps
safely removed from your watery
depths. Then he took a breath, almost
imperceptible, and said in dry, measured
tones as grit rushed past my leg,

                       “I found a malignancy.”

So, yes. We discovered a month ago that my wife has rectal cancer. The tumor itself has since been staged at T4n0, which means it’s a very large tumor that has not yet spread to the lymph nodes, though nearby lymph nodes are inflamed. The medical oncologist initially set the staging at 3b, which indicates the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes, but the staging may be lowered to 3a or possibly even 2, though the size of the tumor itself along with the inflamed lymph nodes makes stage 2 unlikely.

This poem came about as I tried to tell my sister what it was like for me to learn about the tumor, using this childhood experience as metaphor for the more recent experience. Perhaps the doctors involved, including the surgeon overseeing the case, could be the lifeguards and the treatment protocol the buoy. But, for the most part, I feel like I’ve already been swept out to sea. We do try to stay positive, though. That’s important.

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Convergence

Once I finished “Light” in March, my queue was finally empty. So I found myself looking in a folder I long ago named “Backburner” to see what was there. This is the folder where I put files for poems that I started working on, but eventually abandoned for one reason or other. Upon reviewing its contents, I decided the folder didn’t contain anything of interest to me. Inside that folder is another one named “Altogether Abandoned.” In there I found a few old ideas sitting in digital limbo. One was titled “hybridanelle—original marriage commemoration attempt.” I only vaguely recalled what that might have looked like, so I opened it.

The first 13 lines of this hybridanelle were already written. I tried to think of why I abandoned the poem, and then I remembered. It didn’t really feel like the marriage I was entering into. So I scrapped it and composed “Matrimony” instead, in large part inspired by hurricane Katrina. Much more fitting for my first marriage. The first 13 mystically abstract lines of this unfinished poem were actually more fitting for my current marriage. However, there’s just no way I could re-commemorate it to my second marriage. My wife deserves completely original poems, such as “Wild Cherry,” written a couple years—and not that many poems—ago.

So why bring this out of the mothballs? Well, I liked the language of these first 13 lines. I didn’t actually think I could make it work as a full hybridanelle poem, but I thought of this concept of life as a stream and streams converging into one another as they move through the fields of existence, and I decided I’d like to give it a try. So, no longer a marriage commemoration poem—just a poem inspired by the notion of convergent lives, hence the title.

    Convergence

       Consciousness emerged in swirls of color.
          The pliant void composed a shifting stream,
      an ever-changing song of rippling texture.
   Awareness rose and surged in subtle shades of light,
     searching through confusion for companionship and trust
         eventually to join another stream for life.
           Two channels merged to share a mutual course,
          brought to flow as one by karmic forces.
       The pliant void composed a shifting stream,
     singing like a river that curves throughout the night,
    swelled with faint reflections of a darkness steeped in stars.
       Awareness rose and surged in subtle shades of light,
            sent before the hidden crush of pressures
         en route to mingle matters of the soul.
     Brought to flow as one by karmic forces,
       each turbid swell of dream converged and realized
           harmony beyond the scope of individual strains.
              Eventually to join another stream for life,
             each flood progressed with all its sense of self
          through wooded solitudes and desert places
      en route to mingle matters of the soul.
 Condensed from engrammatic vapors, recondite,
     elements of being coalesced until in streams
         awareness rose and surged in subtle shades of light
             amid the grassy sprawl of open spaces
          beneath the floating glow of moonlit clouds
     through wooded solitudes and desert places
  down long cascades past deep brown pools—where lithe
      recollection’s slender shadow below the surface stirs—
            eventually to join another stream for life.
                Like soft white rays refracted through high mists,
           consciousness emerged in swirls of color
        beneath the floating glow of moonlit clouds,
    an ever-changing song of rippling texture
that shimmered down from realms of dream, so faint and slight,
    time held no form and had no bearing until from out this trance
      awareness rose and surged in subtle shades of light,
           eventually to join another stream for life.

This, my 22nd hybridanelle, was a bear to compose. As I suspected, the refrains used in the first 13 lines were not easily remolded into fresh expressions. It also took me a good while to figure out what I was doing with the meter and end-line schemes. There’s one scheme that doesn’t use end-line prosody all, but related concepts, such as “color” and “texture,” “course” and “stream,” “pressures” and “forces,” and a few more. Pretty interesting.

The meters, it turns out, switch between pentameters, hexameters and heptameters. Being a bit out of practice, I actually found it difficult to wrap my brain around this complexity, and I kept forgetting to double-check and make sure I’m following the correct pattern. This gave me some insights into why poetry took a 135 degree turn toward gushy chopped prose a couple centuries ago. It can be bloody difficult, and a lot of times the end result is just not what you were hoping for.

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Rain

I am guessing that one day my son will begin asking the big questions. When he does, I hope that some of the insights I’ve gained along the way will be of use to him. The only way most such questions can really be answered is via metaphor.

Rain

One day you may ask,
        “What is all this?”

    I will tell you,
as best I understand.

          This is a stream
     fed by rains that fell
                   from the stars.

  We all are streams,
       rolling sliding gliding
    toward distant waves.

  Some tumble from cliff tops;
     some roar down craggy canyons;
 some cascade over boulders;
   some carve out wide valleys;
some slide quietly across grassy plains.

  All converge merge and surge
       into one another, blending
    forever into something new.

              But wait.

          Perhaps these images
  have made you think of water.

              Think more…
                                        Light.

     We rained down from the stars.