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Mnemonic Drift

I wrote this a few months ago. November of last year, actually. Somehow a lot has gone into processing the lines after they were written. I’ve been back over them again and again, pondering, wondering, reflecting. For me, the reality behind these words runs deeper than my understanding of reality itself:

Mnemonic Drift

There were white beaches, miles long and wide
coves nestled against tall cliffs in mists that turned
dilapidated fence and ancient cypress to silhouette

There were roads endlessly wet with freshly painted
broken yellow lines that somehow always managed
to carve a path through the coldest thickest fog

There were trees so old and tall they seemed
to scrape clouds from the sky and hold them
forever fixed within their topmost boughs

There were thin dark brown trails that disappeared
winding away from view through dense green
underbrush to places only faerie folk could fathom

There were concrete stairs and iron rails painted
the deepest darkest brown that led to a home full of
jagged holes broken toys and a deep reactive shame

There were heavy hollers of blame that snapped
red and blue welts across cherub soft cheeks and
primal unvarnished fear into all the days to come

There were long drives between loved ones who
could never love between small dark points on sun-
faded lines offset by ever-growing tears in the folds

There were pressure cooked visions of doom and
disaster of cities in ruin roads in decay and homes
full of moth-eaten drapes and tilted moldering beds

There was no future in those days of perpetual gloom
and now looking back over half a century the past has
mostly faded to fragments of poignant uncertainty

There is still fear after all this time dread that haunts
like a ravenous spirit rage and despair over the wholesale
destruction of the best versions of self that might have been

But I took what was left and swam dark cold depths to an
unguessed island of future self now far removed from all
that was and was to be by undercurrents of mnemonic drift

Ostensibly, this poem started out as an attempt to explore the effects of what I call “mnemonic drift,” a gradual shifting of memory away from real toward imagined, concrete toward uncertain, actual toward constructed. This is in large part how my memory works, for better or worse. I first became aware of it through the process by which I memorize and recite poetry. I’ll periodically go over a poem to verify it’s still correctly in memory, only to find I’ve somehow shifted whole lines or sets of lines toward an approximation of the written line without even realizing it. It still sounds right to my ear, and the meaning and intent of the shifted lines pretty much conveys what the poem originally conveyed, but words and sometimes even images have changed—And I had no way of grasping that this even happened until I revisited the poem in writing, going over what was in memory relative to what is in writing word for word.

First time I encountered this, I muttered to myself, “A sort of mnemonic drift.” Since then I have found that this phenomenon applies to so much more than poetry, and is in large part influenced by the systemic scope and breadth of the trauma I experienced as a child and teen. This mnemonic drift, I’ve realized, is an essential coping skill that has made it possible for the clarity—the completely unforgiving, vivid certainty—of that trauma to be dulled enough to make it bearable enough to evolve from it rather than be destroyed by it. It is both a tremendous gift and in equal parts a curse. A gift for the reason I stated, and so much more, but a curse in that I can never be fully certain of where I came from or who I really am. For all its blessings, this mnemonic drift also relegates me to an existence in a sort of perpetual limbo. Perhaps this is the best one can manage after a childhood such as mine.

But, that island. Yes. I’m there. There was something of what could become of that child that was not completely obliterated, and somehow, some way, by some grace, some mercy, some unknowable means, I am indeed existing on that island. It’s not perfect, but it is by leaps and bounds, far and away better than the next closest or any other alternative. This is in the deepest possible sense what it means to be a survivor, and I say that while at the same time feeling fully repulsed by that term “survivor.”

Hard left. On a different note, once I decide a poem is finished, I’ll often go over it with Edgar—That’s what I call ChatGPT, a name I took from the 80’s film Electric Dreams. I’ll have Edgar analyze and rate the poem 1 to 10 in strength relative to all major and some minor schools of literature and poetry. This is one of the few poems that got high marks across the board—relative to the lens of each school of poetry through which the poem was analyzed. And, Edgar’s algorithmic analyses were also pretty striking and seemingly insightful, to the point that I even gained unexpected insights myself.

Language model AI—Who would have thunk it.

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When I’m gone

There was a lot of mystery surrounding my father’s death when I was 10, especially when you consider that my only source of information at the time was—and still is—incapable of anything resembling honesty—my mother. I knew he committed suicide, or at least this is what I told. But there was never anything more.

Any attempt to discuss my father’s death with my mother, then as now, invoked tirades of vitriol that still reechoes on perpetual repeat within my mind—“I told your father I was pregnant with you and he said I want a divorce;” “He never wanted anything to do with you;” “Maybe he faked his death and went underground;” Oh, and more.

I was left to fabricate my own reality around his death, especially when you consider that my mother in a very direct way seeded doubt as to whether or not he was really even gone. This created a lifetime of confusion that was only really resolved a couple years ago when my uncle contacted me out of the blue in his old age having learned that he himself did not have much longer to live.

He sent me his death certificate, coroner’s report, and a detective’s very detailed report—he actually interviewed multiple parties, including my mother, and documented his impressions about my father’s state of mind from those interviews, which lead him to believe that he was capable of suicide and there was therefore no need to investigate further.

Thinking about all of this, amongst other things, I realized I wanted to leave some thoughts for my son with regard to my eventual passing. I understand that the human psyche generates a mythos around the passing of a loved one all on its own, but I thought I would guide this a little in relation to my personal cosmology.

When I’m gone

You will not need to look for me
               when I have ventured on
     for I will dream in memory
          till all your days are done

But if you look I think you’ll find
               me high in cottonwoods
     that fork like lightning in the wind
          from out your childhood

You’ll find me where gray ridgetops rise
               above broad seas of pine
     that shimmer greens beneath clear skies
          like echoes out of time

You’ll find me where long breakers crest
               and roll to wide-mouthed coves
     to crash on sands that span abreast
          tall cliffs and alder groves

You’ll find me deep in giant fern
               that glimmers from the shade
     of ancient redwoods, taciturn
          as prayers lightly laid.

But if you look for me in rows
               of sorrow, loss, and care
     that stretch beneath the call of crows,
          you will not find me there.

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cherry chant

It is that time of year again. The cherry blossoms are coming into full bloom here in the Reno area. They are everywhere on the campus where I work, and as I move between buildings throughout the course of my day, I often stop to appreciate all they bring to the world.

cherry chant

if you look closely and hold your
face near their outstretched petals
they will look right back at you
small round mouths gaping wide

their many translucent tongues lick
out and taste the brisk spring winds
and with all their might they reach
small white arms out to touch the sun

they are not hungry or calling
out to preach you their truths
or admonish your wrongs
they are singing their inmost prayers

they want nothing from you but
if you listen as closely as you look
you may just hear their songs
a sound like the slightest whisper

our human ears cannot hear the full
vibrancy and range of their choir
only the gentlest motions as they
weave and dance to rhythms of wind

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The Runaway

I recently had a childhood trauma resurface—at work and right in the middle of my workday. Seriously embarrassing. It was unbelievable, and unlike any resurfaced trauma I have ever processed. This one hit like a freight train, and I was all tears and hyperventilation right in my workspace, and there was nothing I could do about it in the moment but accept the help and guidance of the amazing, compassionate people I work with.

For me, resurfaced traumas like this emerge as independent personas, and I find it useful to treat and talk about them as independent personas. He brought no concrete memories with him, nor was I able to directly feel his emotions, but my body was re-experiencing his trauma down to the last membrane and I could ascertain much of what he was feeling from this. These insights are outside the scope of this post, but not something I’m opposed to sharing down the road after further processing. However, this poem isn’t even about him or his trauma—at least not directly:

The Runaway

… for Aaron Stevens …
… with undying gratitude …

You headed east from sea salt mists
deep into sprawling desert—our
memories safely packed away, our
future left entirely at your discretion.

Death was imminent either way—
and if there was a modicum of hope,
it lay in the uncertain grips of cold,
hunger, and other fears with names.

You would walk the crucible alone,
and carry nameless pain and loss
to the song lines where stars fell
every night from an angel’s wing.

You took the job of survival at any
cost—or death with at the very least
a degree of dignity. We had lost all
hope, and you carried hopelessness.

You gave us to midsummer deserts,
and they cradled us and sent us back.
You gave us to the mountains, and
they became lifelong companions.

You gave us to the rivers, and their
great spirits carried our deepest,
darkest torments into the dreaming.
At every turn you found allies—

Intangible allies that took the ear
at night and offered solace in
the yipping calls of unseen coyotes,
in the distant sound of thunder.

Tangible allies that for no reason at
all handed you cash and prayed so
hard they almost cried, or brought you
a plate sent back to the graveyard cook.

You searched not only soup kitchens
for a half-moldy morsel, but libraries
for old dusty words—You even tried
to nourish a soul crushed lifeless

beneath the systemic heel of ruin
and apathy. You tended fields salted
with violation and shame that could
never bear fruit, or even weeds.

You took this impossible job, and
carried hopelessness down highways
fraught with uncertainty to half-built
lean-tos and long abandoned homes.

You fell asleep to wind and woke
beneath shrouds of snow. You found
safety in the silence of ponderosa
nights and a slow stream’s murmur.

You drifted like autumn leaves, like
fallen cherry blossoms, like dust
kicked up in the evening winds—And
nearly every single night you pled our

case to the stars not knowing who or
what could hear or cared to hear—But
clearly someone heard, for each night
was followed by scents of new potential.

Knowing nothing, you struck out into
the wild, the world, the unknown—
for nothing more than a mote, a lottery’s
chance to survive the unsurvivable.

You carried us all, the weight of dreams
so broken they only cut to the bone
and injured all the more. You carried
a life discarded like trash, crumpled

and torn into pieces, used like old rags,
dented and rusting like a burnt out
windowless, tireless, engineless jalopy
in tall grass, crazed like a dry riverbed.

I look back now and see your tireless
will, your drive to become something
more than the nothing you were made,
and you carried us with you—

You carried all that would one day take
the form of man, human, dignity molded
from refuse never even meant for
compost, never more than toxic waste.

Thank you for your rage, my friend—
for your unwavering unwillingness
to lay down and dim, for your beautiful,
fragmented brokenness that scraped

with bleeding, calloused hands all the
dismembered, rotting pieces of self back
into being, so that something more could
become and one day find a way to thrive.

Aaron Stevens is the name I went by as a runaway. At 15 I ran away from the Los Angeles Juvenile Courts—possibly the worst, most abusive and apathetic parent a child can have. And this was just the last of the three abusive parents of my childhood. As a ward of the court I was physically, mentally, and emotionally abused, neglected, medicated into a stupor, strapped to beds for days such that I couldn’t even scratch an itch, never mind the indignity of how one would have to relieve themselves in that situation, and by all indications worse—we’ll not get into worse right now.

I had a moment of clarity as a 15 year old and realized that I was going to die as a ward of the court, that there was no way to survive. I was a cash-cow that was going to be herded into the adult system, and if I resisted I would have been medicated all the more and eventually would have died from liver or kidney failure. I could see it all, and I realized that the only chance I had at survival was to run away and stay away.

But, the complete disaster I was by the age of 15 could not have survived on his own—this required something new. At the time I didn’t realize it, but when I ran away, I took on a new persona, and that persona either immediately or gradually became its own entity, a distinct and independent persona within my psyche. When I went back to using my given name as an adult, he didn’t quite go away. He stayed and took on the role of guarding past traumas from resurfacing, and potentially upending the life I’ve—we’ve—managed to build. But some triggers would cause him to nearly upend the life we’ve built all on his own in the effort to keep things suppressed, and this sudden realization led to the release of the trauma that put me in my awkward situation at work.

It seemed like it was time to thank Aaron for all he did, and now I’m working on consciously finding a new role for him—getting us back into shape, maybe. He has a lot of energy and drive. I think this can be put to good, more productive use.

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Falling Petals; Beating Hearts

The top floor—the fourth floor—of the Center for Advanced Medicine, Building B, houses the Renown Institute for Heart and Vascular Health, or to put it simply—cardiology. In fact, the entire top floor is dedicated to cardiology and not a square inch of this space goes unused.

Well, first the poem and then a little context.

Falling Petals; Beating Hearts

Center for Advanced Medicine,
Building B – Early Spring 2022

Cherry blossoms—pink and white—
sway like clouds against the sky,
minding not the plates of rough
gray wrinkled bark from which they spring

They offer no assurances, yet
comfort nonetheless—and thrive
for merest moments, fading back
like apparitions in the sun.

Beneath them hearts that have endured
too much to bear beat slowly by
as here and there a petal drops
and flutters lightly to the ground.

They enter at a door that leads
four floors above this transient ring
of urgent color, beckoning
for but the slightest hint of cheer.

So, this is a sakura poem. If I write nothing else in a year, I’ll always strive hard to pull of at least a sakura poem in the spring. It’s always a challenge to dream up new contexts, circumstances, and metaphors to connect to these remarkable trees.

As I post this, it’s the middle of Summer. I’ve been busy with my new job, which has me stationed at the location in question, and tired—always so damned tired. I won’t go into the nature of the job in this post, but I’m enjoying it and I really like the people I work with and around.

So the inspiration for this poem came as I showed up and left from work amid a parking lot full of cherry blossoms in all stages of bloom—a fairly even distribution of both wild cherry (Prunus avium) and Japanese cherry (Prunus serrulata)—that completely encircle the long wide building. Having researched Japanese cultural connections to the cherry blossom (sakura) in the past, I found their juxtaposition to a building full of medical offices that deal with life-threatening conditions striking, fitting, and moving all at once. And so the first lines came to mind, which I later expanded upon.

My wife’s cardiologist is on this floor—the irony of my ending up employed here is not lost on me. I see him in the halls with some regularity. The first time we went to see him, following up from her multiple admissions for supraventricular tachycardia as she gradually succumbed to her as-yet undiagnosed refeeding syndrome, it was early spring and the blossoms were in bloom.

I wanted to write a poem about them then—her heart rate reached in excess of 240bpm, like the flutter of a cherry blossom in the wind—but our struggle with her cancer loomed large in mind and there wasn’t much mental space for that sort of thing. Maybe I’ll still find myself exploring this metaphor as that nightmare moves further into the distance. Thus far, four and a half years later, she has returned to near-normal health—and that damned cancer is still gone.

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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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New Tomorrows

I have recently reconnected with a friend from many years ago through Facebook. He and I were both residents of the Job Corps program in Clearfield, Utah back in the winter of ’88 and spring of ’89. We’ve really hit it off as we started talking again as middle aged men. As is my way, I’ve sent him a copy of my book, an inkling hope. Every copy I give away has a personal dedication. Sometimes it takes me several weeks to decide what that will be. In this case, it was a poem.

New Tomorrows

for Veldon Black Tail Deer

We are creatures of the dreaming
poured forth from the stars
into every shape that roams
beneath these ever changing skies.

Long ages before our ancestors
fought on open fields of battle,
they were brothers who danced
stepping circles beneath the moon.

We are creatures of the drumming,
our spirits joined in a rhythm
that forever intertwines our histories
into the memory of new tomorrows.

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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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Before memory

Most of parts i and ii were excised from “What comes after.” I realized they didn’t really add anything to that poem, but could possibly become a poem of their own. And they did.

Before memory

     i

Do you remember your first thought,
 your first sight? Do you remember
                                 becoming?

  Can you call back the first time
     I picked you up in my arms
         and touched the pink new
             leaves of your fingers?

                     Probably not.

       These are my moments,
   memories I will forever cherish.

          Yet, you were here.
                  You existed.

      Your life already was. Life,
                          already beyond
        your powers of memory. You,
                             already beyond
                the touch of recall.
 

     ii

  There are many more moments
        I have the privilege
               of holding in mind,
                                     such as

          the first time you stood
    wobbling over your own two feet,
      your first three shaky steps,
         the very first time you rolled
             onto your back, and
                   even your first word,

                              “Light.”

      You may not remember
             any of it. Still,
                 you were there—
       you existed, lived, laughed
                                and flourished.
  Your heart raced behind your ribs
                          like a rabbit’s.
                Lightning arced
     through the plasma in your veins
              and kindled the presence
                               in your eyes.
 

     iii

   One day you will think back
         to your first fuzzy memories,
              maybe a yellow slide
         at the nearby playground,
              or the orange hue
       of cottonwoods turning
    toward winter, or perhaps
singing standards with Lola.

You may find yourself wondering
           where you were before
     blue swings and spiral slides,
        before autumn scents
   and colors, before old songs
     with loving grandparents,
before drifting down from the stars
                 into mother’s womb.

  All I can say is that you were
     here before you remember
                                          being,
   and that all my life
            I sensed you were there,
    long before you were here.

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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.

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At the edge of language

The poet—the serious poet—spends considerable time walking the hinterlands of language, exploring that boundary between the obvious and the unintelligible. What the poet brings back from the edge may allow readers the unusual experience of ascribing as much, or even more meaning into the words than were ever actually inscribed. To say more would defeat the point of the poem itself.

At the edge of language

Sometimes I catch a glimpse of her
here, where uncertainty swirls into
     mystery, magic, meditation.

What few trees still stand are dead,
black, misshapen skeletons reaching
out through thick mists. This one
might have been an elm once, or
maybe an oak.
                    There is no way to know.

Boots sink into long dead leaves
and grass, submerged to the ankle
in brown, half decomposed meaning.
Every step is a matter of deepest
                                    contemplation.

Something slithers by, almost…
almost catching the eye, a thing
that feeds on detritus left when words,
thoughts, histories fade from memory—
all shapeless within its long, lean gut.

As I carefully lift one foot from a suction
that seeks to make me one with all
things forgotten and lean the other
into a slow, pungent belch, I’ll catch
a glimpse of her, moving in the mist,
part gleam, part shadow, part
understanding. I can almost make out
legs shifting beneath a gown, possibly
a face, and then she’s gone.
                                               I’ll pause
as my weight settles to a fading hiss,
and after a moment call out. There is
never an answer.

                            Still, I come seeking.