Holding hands

I had a grip.

A naked palm clenched

around,

I had a handle on the thing

softly carrying it with me,

until I noticed

the odd itch of thick blood

sliding down and out 

between my fingers.

Holding on too tight

but feeling nothing 

of pain or wounds

after barely

holding on so long,

I observed myself

doing it wrong.

After all-

the petals had fallen

behind me

leaving 

choices made for me.

No blessings to count,

no scent

to take in-

and it must have been dead

who knows how long...

Dried and brittle

piercing-

This is 

how I knew

He loved me not. 

Painting by Carolus-Duran, 'Portrait of Lucy Lee Robbins' by Carolus Duran, dated 1884 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. 

Orchestra

As we aim to silence the pain
which we are fairly allotted
by birth-right

a deafening calm consumes us
while focused on the pleasures
overdue to us
in the treble.

Signals cease to lift
the alarm lever,
if we don't
move
our lips

to speak
to the self
in the language of the body.

Before translation
the strangeness deters our curiosity
about how one thing may become another
and make melodies
by note, by color, by shade, by immersion,

there is understanding
needs to be met
and lyrics to listen to
while we move

this way and that
away from where it hurts most
toward what we know
says nothing
about us.



Painting by Wilhelm Carl August Zimmer (1853-1937) / Public domain.

Wait lifter

Where I have sometimes
pled with pronounced pain,
head nestled in a pillow,

I find myself
Now
heaving
and overcome-
weeping with joy
at the alignment,

at how far
these things travel
and come back around.

And I levitate
the world-

at least it feels this way

in the middle.



Image of art installation Title: Levitated Mass by artist Michael Heizer at Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Pain poems

Perhaps, like Plath
               and Sexton, along with
nameless Others,
Ars Moriendi,
the shared obsession
               was rebellion
               (against the self)

We do this our own way

Alone, like childhood
                and candied P's & Q's
they all thought they were
getting and making a way
                 from direction(s).

All I know
                 is that life-
the stuff that makes us up
(in the middle)
                 guts, chakra, vim, what not,
is not the same stuff
                 we put out, project,
hold title(s) to,
but the real stuff must be
                  Here somewhere...

When the pain ultimately wins,
perhaps the prize is popularity
                   in passing
as if believing in the benefits
of retirement (afterlife),
such as a tomb and sarcophagus
                    with a cat and some gold
we would reap the forever fields
                     we would have our Faith
and it would be good
enough
or worth more than Now.

Well, my well must be empty.
I hear echoes in chambers,
growls in caves,
screams behind closet doors,
and pitch so thick all is
                     hollow, except these
twisted guts, gnawing and gnashing
kicking and screaming
frozen and struck dumb-

and still
I breathe
through it.

And even when it becomes difficult-
if not
                     Impossible to stand up-
right-w/ spine straight
and those familiar serrated red daggers
twist while
blue dots with white halos pulsate
                      behind closed i-lids-
(shhh...)

I know
All will pass.




Painting by Gabriël Metsu [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Spasm

Silence sucks me through this narrow tunnel and only

in my knitted spiral, soundness burrows behind flat walls,

I am pulled down or out, never to get all the way

through to where

it is all white

there. 

Painting By Jean-Guillaume Carlier (1638-1675) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

A lady makes lace

A fistful from elsewhere

Punches back in brass-ware-bare-

knuckles wedged in the apex of this-
body

cage thatched walls, splintering straws

called shelter and In-side to pro-tect this

(hide).

Half dives of full lung, skimming the top ten percent

and heart labors with lead levers, knobbiness is us put out

subwoofer, speaks her dropping a guillotine beat tapped
feet.

Shine, reflective knowing rust by blood

does not make it more occidental
or evident.

Voluminous was in front of us.
Luminous. Seethe and simmering. Conduct thyself.

It meant we were alchemy in the ancient light and cubed to

feeling how close we must be-coming-a but-ajar-
collided with vaporous transitions in space-not
now.

Inevitable and deaf,
truths collide and cling on crystalline charities,
pyramids and Euclid's. 

Insoluble, diluted, inconsolable.

I heave recycled the air, carbon copies fuse for our survival

fitting with such suffocation as we wear with elephantine
authority sans sin-cerity on extended vocation, retied without
social security
which

never Was
you are welcome.



Painting by J. Alden Weir [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Was

She cringes. They knew.

Didn’t say, wouldn’t change

nothing, anything

help or hurt

They wait, mercy resides

patience, temperance,

in these, out there

touch and feel

lost and found

not looking, not seeing,

not needing, not wanting

more than, merely

her presence, her past

come back…

Painting By Félicie Schneider (1831 - 1888) (Sotheby's New York, 29 January 2010, lot 867) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Rough drafts

Those screams are breathing
And if this is polishing
it is abrasive.






Artwork by Franciszek Żmurko c. 1896 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Pain scale

The bottom bass drum throbs*_*_*_*

catching its reverberating rhythm…echoes in your bones.

Pangs wail unsteady*by back-feed screams**nails scratch black slate.

Rips jagged jerks

                            muscle movements spasm

                                                                       ---and tense-letting briefly a sense

-a single gasp, a breath-       before coming through.

(Inside again),

trembling upon return          inevitable cool rushes    waterfalls through hot veins

hit icy boulders,

white raging waters--direct and dictate

the dermal, thermal, rising

skin, pouring forth

in urgency of some release!

A pressure valve, a double boiler, the kettle calls black______***

incessantly nagging in angry notes.

(I can only whisper in whimpers)

Struck- dumb, now-I refrain somehow

unable to take any more
-pain.

Composed 9/9/15.

Image of painting By Sir Charles Bell [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Patient suffering from tetanus. 

DeLiberation

Disappear
is a simple enough
request of such a pret-ty little word.

Pass
this test
of strength without kil-ling
this too

Walk
it off, putting thoughts
in some order, neat-ly notice
all the lit-tle things
in the path

        Above
Rise

Sleep
time taken
in an alternate real-ity
vacation and breath

Find
moments, like this
to feel
(me)
Charge
up, forward, through
the r-evolving gates of Dis
                   never
                                              falling
behind

Time
to think
about things
like pret-ty lit-tle words
like 

These.

Composed 9/9/15.

Image By Sonia Sevilla (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Emancipation of empathy

The father leaves
the delivery room
unable to wrap his grey brain
around her bloody pain.
The mother knows now
she is alone,
responsible for their survival.

The baby opossum,
smiling and listless,
lays still blinking away flies
from his glassy black eyes.
Rejected by his mother,
he dies alone
in the fresh cut grass.

A mother sits with her grown son,
worry lines her face connecting
the years between them.
Pain wrenches his body,
suffering they endure it side by side;
one will live,
one will die.

Salvation is a single passenger of deliverance
traveling through the tortuous view
arriving as a vicarious vacancy
forgetting and letting the suffering go,
anothers pain, one and the same.


Image By Correggio (Antonio Allegri) (Italy, Parma, circa 1489-1534) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The disaster in me

Gasp

gusty winds aloft

Tremble

strings of faulty nerves

Flooded

emotional levee buckles

damned

storm

surges

Quaking knees

collapse

Heat waves

carried by ripping currents

that pull me deeper

nearer

the purple flame

Fire

accelerated

I am a natural disaster.

Image by Leonardo da Vinci, 1517-1518, Natural Disaster [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.