Category Archives: Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow

this

03 Tuesday May 2022

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Now words are rare. Whatever synapses

let in the Divine are misfiring. ––

Neurons fail. Neural pathways do not please.

Now words are a struggle. I’m struggling

just to write this. Once I said I’d go turn

a tramp steamer into a library. ––

Sail from port to port, sharing that stubborn

love of books with all who live by the sea.

Now I’m struggling just to write this. Now

I sit in my chair and –– stare. There are no

books here. Words, like the water, turn brackish

each time I go down. Let me drown, somehow,

instead of this decline. Instead I know:

first I floundered, now flail and soon perish.

writhingly

26 Friday Nov 2021

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Tangled hair in foam. Desolate skin. Breasts

beaten in waves. Where will my ghost shark go

when my lung start to fill? The sea’s conquests

shall all pass overhead while terrors flow

around. Listen: even darkness can blur

in the deepening depths. Without gravestone

or bones you won’t call me your ancestor.

Child of stars and storms. Child of a sea crone

and her fishwife. Orphan of all the drowned.

What good are husky-wet lips when you won’t

kiss them? Underflow: make me writhingly

grotesque, like the Sea’s fey or Brine’s hellhound.

Once I pressed to enter you. You said, “don’t.”

We stopped. My grave lays here: in memory.

blunder

16 Thursday Apr 2020

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Often I wake up sore and bent. Not riled,
but spent. As if I’ve brawled, bullied in dreams

I can’t recall; the rest of this defiled
life spent in memory. No wonder, “screams,”

and, “dreams,” rhyme so easily. No wonder
I can’t recall. I’ve been on either side

of that word: Bully. Dull One. The Blunder.
Special Ed. I thought … I hoped if I fried

my brain enough I would forget; yet hell
is on either side of that, too. What screams

more than, “sorry, dull child, I couldn’t save
you”? I broke you, child; and since to rebel

is to forget that you’re broken, all my dreams
show me, each time, that I’ve never been brave.

sick months

08 Wednesday Apr 2020

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Last year the sugar-making moon arrived
like my neighbors, who rendered fat, boiled sap,

finished their winter-time tales of how they thrived
in lean months. This April, though, has turned crap:

no sap runs, no tap drips, no urge itches.
The dead keep count of the throngs arriving

and each day passes without cure. “Curses
cest by gods,” some say. “Th’ End is Comin’,”

they say; as if there’s never been horror shows
before; as if spring won’t follow winter.

Maple, ghosts and spigots: “’tis not sugar
‘at kills,” in these sick months … just our sorrows.

Neighbors endure with their tales and laughter
and I listen, lean with this sick hunger.

red thread

14 Thursday Nov 2019

Posted by in Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow, Passings and Death Notes, Poetry, sonnet

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— after a loss.

If love is what we make of it, then what
counts is not who we’ve lost but everyone

waiting for us at the end. “Love, spirit,
baby cat, I’m so proud of you. It’s done.

You’re safe. Sleep. Wait for me. I will follow.”
“His heart has stopped,” the vet said. I woke to

a strange empty bed. No nuzzling. No
medicine to prep. No deep sing-song mew

for food. Maybe my faith (“Love, wait for me.”)
is wrong? Maybe there’ll be no one waiting?

It’s hard when all you have is a red thread
joining you two. My altar looks lonely

without him sprawled in a sunbeam, grooming
his dark coat, burning with flecked shades of red.

plead

10 Sunday Nov 2019

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Last night, two a.m. at the hospital,
with your loved one’s blood on your jeans. Ruin

and his screaming are still stuck in your skull
the next morning, all that noise while someone

tried to save his life. I brought him home. He
slept pressed close to my side. Can a tumor

grow and bloom so fast in days? They showed me
some X-rays. What difference does it matter

if it wasn’t there on Tuesday? It’s there
now. Death takes in threes: I lost Kriszti last

week and maybe J.R. today. Then who?
One more shock. Two weeks ago I would swear

life was good but pain is subtle and vast
and I can only plead: “not yet, not through.”

best

02 Saturday Nov 2019

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Today I took my cat back to the vet
so that they can try and save his kidneys.

Three days. They will labor against this threat
for three days. “We’ll try our best.” But kitties

die just like the rest of us and, “our best,”
often isn’t good enough. After three

days then what? For years he slept on my chest.
For years he was my love, my refuge, he

witnessed what no one else has, what no one
else will. Three days of waiting, of patience,

of fear, of, “I did my best.” Is it wrong
when we say that? Grief, not sin, damns us. None

who read this will come in time. Let absence
break me. Today here, love. Tomorrow gone.

midway

24 Thursday Oct 2019

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“Midway through this maddening life,” you know
how this goes, “I found myself unredeemed

in a dark wood.” The “right road” was wrong. No.
The road was gone, as in, damned. What I dreamed.

What I blasphemed. Lovers of words must name
horror. I have swallowed demons before,

felt their workings in me. “Clock: tock-tock.” Same
shame. Same grief. Damn me with a touch of gore

on the cogwheel. Things slow down. In your heart
there is a murmur. You know how this goes.

X-rays show blood clots. Demons I can’t squeeze
out of you. That is my horror, sweetheart,

I’ll lose you midway … despite all of those
prayers and tears and pathetic “don’t leave me”s.

that question

12 Saturday Oct 2019

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In a way it’s just like loving a ghost.
Even on our “date” you vanished long

enough to be rude. “Only you,” you boast;
but as I read your new posts am I wrong

to doubt that truth? The problem with the dead
is that they don’t change. You can beg, threaten

and wail but it changes nothing. I’ve said
I hate not trusting you, but that question

refuses to die when I read your posts.
Why hire a soothsayer when I know I

deserve better? — Ghosts might even agree,
they just refuse to stop; that’s why they’re ghosts.

That’s why I’ve finished turning a blind eye.
Little ghost, keep posting. I set you free.

sirloin

11 Friday Oct 2019

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I’d hoped I’d have no need to get upset
though I’ve been others’ sirloin before, burned

outside but juicy in. Juice they won’t get.
I stopped being eatable when they earned

all their scorn; insisting that I just don’t,
“get it.” True, there was a lot I never

got from them, which is why they’re not a note
I sing, a name I’ll claim as a lover

who did me wrong. They’re dead space I cast down
like a jealous god; heartbroken to find

out what they did when I wasn’t around.
Odd how the hungry ones get left behind.

I’d say: Tell me that I’m wrong about you.
Show me that’s something you can even do.