Category: The Canon (page 1 of 2)

As the youngest of four, I was raised on questions.
You see, I was always last to understand, and so, I inevitably asked a lot of questions.

Like: what do you mean I shouldn’t lie?
or Why am I in trouble?
or Why don’t you want me to tell the truth?
or Why are you crying?
Who’s that? and what does that letter mean…for us..for you…for me?

But despite my insistent, wondering nature, there are many things I still do not know about my family.
Like…
Why my brother seems so much like my father, his face striving to cut those same sharp cheeks; to furrow a similar brow. I wonder how his mind must have captured and sealed away stark, signpost, still-life reliefs of my father’s way of being angry, a man who, for me, remains shrouded still in the penumbra of my secondhand memory. Did my brother need my father’s love to fill his heart so much that he mimed out angry outbursts as if they were no different from other words of kindness? When we were children, I must remember: my brother was also just a child. He knew not what he was doing.

Other questions nag still.
Like…
Why did my grandmother stay with her corpulent, boorish abuse for a husband when we blocked them in the parking lot of the assisted-living apartments with our vehicle – a slapdash intervention to prevent their surprise reunion. How did she resist the entreaties of her family as we contentiously pursued a condescending intolerance the like of which was unfamiliar to my quaking voice, in a winter not yet frigid enough to have me shaking like some last leaf of autumn. Weeks later, my grandma foisted up an answer. She said she stayed because of loneliness. All that time. In a house across the street from the graveyard. What is loneliness?

Did my grandma’s bullheadedness have anything to do with why my mother and sister were butting heads, or why my mom told me to tail my sister who was running out of doors to slam? She should have known I couldn’t keep up with her. Lacey was so much more my senior, colossal, with great strides and the rebellious brilliance of a teenager enthralled by her own presumptive independence. There was a question I remember asking myself repeatedly, after I was spotted by her and I failed my mission. I remember asking, “Why couldn’t I have been a better ninja?”, even though I returned home unnoticed by my mother.

Now, it seems to me the worst poems are written with unanswerable questions so I will try my best to rationalize some mystery.

I say, In all these lurid vignettes poorly lit by memory’s shadow, there was true filial love when we could remember to forget the faults of our family. Where pride, arrogance, and envy all dissolved in the acid of our jokes, the umami of thanksgiving dinners, and in the ambrosia of songs whose words we all knew like secular scripture. Yet, taken together, these questions remind me, in my youth as in my adulthood, I know nothing about my family.

We all love to keep hidden, secret things.
I don’t know why but I know that we must.
Maybe it’s a matter of truth or trust,
or a violent urge to make our dreams sing.

We peek beneath peat, wear curious masks,
read between lines, and bury notes in caskets.
We ask tragic questions. Did I mention
keeping secrets is a chosen profession?

But secrets all bear a revealing tell,
like a sonnet ended by its couplet
which conceals its own breast like a doublet
to cloak the sly spot where the heart does swell.

I do find myself best down a deep, dark well,

where I can hear my breath, and my being,
and hide myself from the prying sunlight.
Alone, to think, to dream of what’s right, and
open my eyes to what I’m not seeing.

It’s almost as if I am awake but dreaming.

Without this lone pillar of privacy,
I could not be me. I’d cease to exist
as a freethinker. I seek to enlist
you in my defense of strange secrecy

which, let’s be real here, is not a given.
So many people love lords and masters,
who want naught more than rank-and-file living,
and absolution from sinful pastors.

They suffer from missing peace in their heart
which means they fear what they cannot control,
like the great, mysterious works of art,
whose miracles I do hereby extol.

And I hope that you share in this delight,
for rotten swamps are brewing up monsters,
and we’ll need every voice in this next fight,
when we will confront the state-side mobsters

who know the secret to power is all
in the present control of the past;
when the story of our future does fall
into their hands, then the die has been cast.

When I spoke naught for the first, they came for me last.

I feel like I need you all the time. Like you illuminate my world.

And that it makes me weak and dependant to say such a thing.

I feel like you’re giving me breadcrumbs when I need hot loaves.

I feel stupid and depressed. Like no one knows or understands what I am sad about. And that itll last forever.

Im frustrated that ive gone to pieces. Mostly, im surprised you left me as soon as you could leave me. I remember asking asking if you had already left before leaving.

I can’t survive on just texts. And planning feels so prescribed, impersonal.

I don’t know how to repair my heart after being rejected by one of the truest friends Ive ever known. I cant stop hearing you say that you dont find me attractive anymore or that you need to go live alone.  And you seem so surprised when I tell you this as if those words wouldnt resonate and echo within any body, repeating themselves.

And I feel like you lied without lying. Like having an open secret or keeping mum. Did you just say comforting halftruths to escape my distraught in the moment? Were you just buying time until you left?

I wonder when I started to think of your displays of comfort so cynically and I am dismayed that I cant place the origin to these doubts. And how unfair Im being.

Was this year so bad? So different from all the rest? Did you grow so much that you grew to prefer other soil?

Richer soil? I ask myself. The grass is always greener over there so why wouldnt the soil be richer than mine. What is greater proof of loss than disinterest?

Its been too long since writing helped me through a hard time. Maybe ive been in denial about how hard its been. Or maybe I got soft. Or ive been crying too long about you or not enough. I could never tell. The answer depends on who you ask.

Im tired of having all these feelings alone when we were so happy to share in each others. At least, I felt happy to indulge you in your moods though sometimes I was humbled by your cavernous depths. And here I find myself spelunking alone in my own subterranean labyrinth with just the glowing embers of my crumbled heart to light my way. You’re the only one who knows Im here and how dark it is.

To your credit, you do pop in from above once in a while, flash me a glimpse of the lonely tunnels I must explore and smile invitingly, still from above, and beckon me forward as if I shouldnt be afraid.

And I feel weak for being afraid. And I fear what I’ll find in blindness.

Euterpe! Muse of Melody,

How did I forget
The beauty of these leaves?
Regret I did not see
The forest for the Trees

Please! One more reprise
Of these sad reeds’ pleas.
Sown seeds can mend ravines
Wait. One moment. I have to pee.

See, these fickle trickles of daffodils
Thrill me as they spill upon my sight
As a whirlwind of wonder. Woodsy trills
dally dully like the Doldrums do at night.

Phantasms merge volcanic chasms.
A crescent moon spoons the sky
as I pray through chattering teeth. Spasms
suffocate the susurrus of my sighs.

My muted, morning lullaby
Mingles with the tingling dusk.
My musk reeks of the Bacchanae
‘In Vino Veritas’ I vociferously busk.

I must confess I’m all alone
in this. I’ve kissed macbeth’s skull
And fell into some empty throne
Or forest ditch. This depression is full

Of all the beauty and all the dreams
That gleam like the breath of ghosts.
Nothing is ever as it seems.
Night annihilates nostalgic toasts

To what is passed and forever lost.
Now, dawn’s cold fog stiffens my soul
And I must bear a boring cross
To mend my home and pay the toll

To alcohol. That fiery fiend keeps me in thrall
With bounteous beauty and bedraggled sense
Of sight and smell. How sickly seems its call
In the belligerence of the present tense.

And was it worth it, after all?
What is wisdom that stales with sobriety?
If you leap from a cliff, are you now free to fall?
Was the guilt in my soul planted by society?

How will I recover my self from me
If I have lost my sense of direction
In this lively forest? The pores of every tree
Stick with the sap of seduction.

I could sweat a suit of tears
And find no solace in sadness.
So, I will sing away my fears
In another drunken bout of madness.