Tag Archives: grief

midway

24 Thursday Oct 2019

Posted by in Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow, Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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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.

Quote

quote unquote

20 Saturday Feb 2016

Posted by in quote unquote

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grief is a house
where the chairs
have forgotten how to hold us
the mirrors how to reflect us
the walls how to contain us

grief is a house that disappears
each time someone knocks at the door
or rings the bell
a house that blows into the air
at the slightest gust
that buries itself deep in the ground
while everyone is sleeping

grief is a house where no one can protect you
where the younger sister
will grow older than the older one
where the doors
no longer let you in
or out

Jandy Nelson, The Sky Is Everywhere

count each scar

16 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

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Water-witches follow the sea’s rough path,
cross to the wave’s door, ride the brackish mare

tide-ways home. I loved a witch. In my bath
she would let me wash her back, braid her hair,

count each scar. I think of her on the shore,
calling the drowned to come home. Souls like fish

swallowed up. I can’t find the witch’s door,
just snow upon waves; moths that vanish

as she did. My sister, I must make friends
with the waves, as you did. You returned

to me riding their backs like a blue flame
until the drowned called for you. Who pretends

they can sing up storms? I can’t. Lost and burned
I’m a child in the fog, calling your name.

untitled #32

27 Friday Dec 2013

Posted by in haiku, Poetry

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this strange winter road
a phone call from here to there
please, no, wait for me

][][

reading loss and grief
blizzard closed the airport down
stupid tarot deck

][][

my aunt said that he
screamed and screamed cave of a mouth
last morphine nightmares

][][

holding his scarred hands
warm but thin as onion skin
last days, then … after

][][

those stars I count five
the body aching pulling
but where? my love, where?

][][

the first springtime rain
ending winter, a blessing,
and you won’t be there

joy

02 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

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Thief. Grief. I’m a servant of the dog star,
the red vixen, the copper bitch. I’ve come
to bleed you dry. With an ax, a crowbar,
fingers, nails, I will reach inside. Your dumb
heart will slow, quiet now, a sulking bag
gone limp in my hand. Then I will replace
it with winter’s starved moon, that silver jag
in the sky that can never be full. Space
is full of holes. You have just one. Why grieve
over joy? Why grieve while singing this song?
The skylark knows this joy — so does the thrush
— that this world is best, we know, we believe,
without you in it. That agreed fact; long
joy of your absence. That smiled-upon hush.

the unwanted children’s house

20 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by in Armenia, Illustration and art

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my orphans

Here are my heroes. I was sent to Gyumri, Armenia, to teach English, but what consumed me instead was the Mankatoon (մանկատուն), The Unwanted Children’s House, the State-run Orphanage for, as the director once told me, “babies 0-5.”

The nurses you see here are my heroes. They were faced with the impossible task of taking care of children the locals didn’t even think were human. In 1996 we were faced with massive shortages in so much (food, medicine, etc) that plagued Gyumri. These women, who hadn’t been paid in months, perhaps years, were, on top of having to take care of their own families, ones who came every day to the orphanage with love enough to care for those who no one else would. And the mortality rate for these children was terrible. With no medicine and the only thing we could feed them was watery, emergency-aid soup, they died. All the children I took care of for two years are now dead, so I’ve been told. I was only 25 and not ready to face a world where children starved to death and I was powerless to do anything about it.

I think, one day, I will see my babies again and apologize to them. Because they died and I survived and I carry that guilt everywhere I go.

without

04 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by in Feminism, Illustration and art, Poetry, sonnet

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lost in the snow

Daughter, how many years does a woman
have? You are now shapeless and I a lice

ridden old man. You knew all the Koran
by heart. You could wrestle any boy twice
your weight. The long bow sang only for you.
So did the war ax. Now I itch with grief.

From the vast and bleak steppe country a few
worn sobs can be heard. There is no relief
for the father I’ve become. I despair.

I’m lost beyond words. All I know now fails
me; all because of some mongrel swordsman.

Somewhere in a grave you hide; with your hair

that has stopped growing; and your tiny nails

that will never need to be cut again.

lilith’s flamenco nuevo

12 Thursday Apr 2012

Posted by in Erotic, Feminism, Lilith, Poetry, sonnet, video

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Poet’s Note: Lilith was Adam’s first wife, an equal, kicked out of Eden for refusing to be man’s inferior. Flamenco is a style of music, song and dance from Andalusia in southern Spain, if Grief chose a style of dance, it would be the Flamenco. Duende is a Spanish term, the poet Federico Garcia Lorca described it as the artistic power everyone feels but no science can ever explain. In Jazz it’s called Soul.

* * *

And the jackals knew that a new woman
was in town. How could they not? The snakes dreamed
of the deep well of souls you keep hidden
between your legs. Our home, this wasteland, gleamed
like a song; where each hand-clap was a scream,
every heel-smack … an act of revolt. Eve
never danced the Flamenco; her bloodstream
never ran this lewd. Let the crude fools grieve;

the moon, La Luna, listens to me sing.
I have no Duende, yet still I .. i ..
i .. i .. i, mi corazón, my heart-string.

We dance as outcasts under promised sky.
We are the owners of nights of freedom
from which blooms the blood-blossom orgasm.

(I love this video soooo much! ¡y un coñazo!)

banshee, mo ghrá

24 Saturday Mar 2012

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

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Note: The Irish phrase “mo ghrá” translates
as “my love.” The Banshee is from Irish mythology;
Bean si, meaning, “a woman of the side” or “a woman
of the fairy mounds,” usually seen as an omen of death
and a messenger from the Otherworld.

* * *

On a midnight walk I spied a shadow
with long white hair, sobbing at Bane Reilly’s
doorstep. They say that a Banshee’s sorrow
knows no end. Yet, it’s said that, “a fury’s
lust is the twin of a furious grief.”
And I, who traffic with spectral lovers,
sat down near. What is the point of belief
if we don’t act on it? There are monsters
in this world, but they wear skins of humans.
Only a man could make such a spirit
so sad. You and I, we are both orphans,
in one form or other. I’ve kissed kismet.
I’ve slept with death, Banshee love. It’s my faith
to share my love with you, my white-haired wraith.

cum shaped like tears

08 Thursday Mar 2012

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry

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[for Hart Crane]

Allow me, love, to let go of your hands.
The way you walked to the rail, dropped your coat,
and jumped. Your love, like your poems, demands
so much, but I’m a lazy boy. You wrote
because of the pubic hairs I sent you.
You wrote that my dried cum was shaped like tears.
Then why? You could have called me your nephew,
your rent boy, your love. We could have spent years
making a life of liquor, barebacking
and odes work. Ink in my mouth. Tell me why
you did not wait. Once I’d have tried, grabbing
your hand, to hold you back – but no, goodbye,
let go, the void calls. Fall. It’s my belief
that I must let go with my cum called grief.