Happy Halloween lovely readers! If y’all are looking for a little light and spooky reading for Samhain, check out the poem I contributed to Wildlife Waystation’s e-magazine. It’s on page 20. The title?
Monsters.
http://wildlifewaystation.org/_blog/News_and_Videos/post/issue-10-animals-that-symbolize-halloween/
A poem for this late Sunday night.
Falling Awake
You never go to bed alone,
with the whispers of your memories
sounding in your head,
keeping you awake
with the uneasy doubt
that there is something you forgot.
One flash in your brain, like lightning,
silent.
You never go to bed alone,
with all those ghosts behind your eyes.
Written in a coffee shop, for all you lonesome lovers.
I will not settle for muffin scraps,
those neglected shavings you pay no attention to
but which I might bite on fast and swallow
and so delude myself I have been given the real thing.
They are but a poor fragment
of the full substance of your sweetness,
and you will leave no trail of crumbs
for me to follow you home.
Hello, lovely readers. For some reason only beknownst to it, my depression has gotten rather uppity over the past few days. But rather than continuing to sit here in a grumbling match with my depression, I decided to pull out my keyboard and describe it instead. Spectres usually aren’t so hard to deal with once you’ve managed to pin them down.
So now I’ve got a poem to share with you all! Aren’t you lucky. But don’t any of you dare go thinking, “Man, more writing, this is great! If only she were depressed more often!”
Seriously. I will excommunicate you.
Nil
Depression is the tired feeling of waking up too early on a grey morning,
cloudy and alone.
Depression is the too busy, too rushed, too late sprint to the next have-to
with the no-consolation of a half-peck on the lips from a lover while you don’t even stop
on your way out the door.
Depression is the uneven kilter of a storm-ridden brain when it’s sunny outside,
and you continue to stare at the light coming through your window even while you shrink from it,
because the bewildered confusion in your eyes is too rapt to look away.
Sometimes depression is pain. Sometimes depression is numbness.
But sometimes depression is none of these things;
it is not pain or numbness or fear or hardness or solitude or sadness.
Sometimes depression is nothing.
An odd non-existence to the mold of organic matter,
an emptiness where there once was something,
a void of anything at all that would indicate you are still alive.
A hollow deadness, too much of an absence to be either blank or black.
A hole into which everything is falling,
but in which there is nothing at all to be seen.
Just something my brain threw out. 🙂
An Ode to Books
There is something to holding a poem in your hand,
a flutter of ideas with each turn of the leaves.
Screens just can’t do that.
Words will load
and files fill,
but you cannot feel the weight
of the author’s breath in your hands.
Only the trivial paper-plate existence
of a silicon chip,
buried away somewhere
in a tangled forest of electricity,
where most of you won’t even think of it.
If only because it could smudge,
ink demands more than that.
She was the dowager queen, they said,
never married at all but once.
But I have seen the wrinkles in her eyes
and know they are faded
far beyond the skin of time.
Boys will be fair, she said one day
while I sat at her knee,
and men may be kind,
but life is cruel
and in the end a heart can break
more than once.
I looked up at her,
the questions in my eyes,
and for once
there was no disguise
for the pain behind the laugh lines
and the crow’s feet
and the bags
that so often escape the notice
of those who do not look for life’s weight.
She smiled,
the only cruel mockery
time had left her
of a once whole heart,
shook her head,
and sighed.
In the end they will disappoint you, my dear,
the lovers, the suitors, the husbands, the friends.
They will murmur sweet words
while they lay in your bed
but the days always come
when the dream will end,
and you will be left
with the scent on your pillow
and nothing but the excuse of their lips.
And even should the sweetest stay,
in the end this world will have its way
and the lips will turn cold
even if the heart does not –
and time will do a man’s job for him
should he refuse.
If he does not leave,
then he will be taken.
I raised my face to protest
but there was nothing to say,
not when the dowager looked that way.
Not with the memories tearing through her eyes
and ripping across her face,
her old, veined hands trembling,
held by a thousand ghosts.
They say the dowager was only married but once.
But I,
I say that she has been married forever –
or not at all.
The unseen strength of woman,
A child on her hips and a husband on her mind,
With dinner to cook
And a PTA meeting to organize,
It doesn’t even cross her mind,
Those words, “thank you.”
The unseen strength of woman,
Five-inch-heels so sharp
They should really be called a spike,
Matching step for step
The confident stride of
The tailored pant legs around her.
Stumbling is not an option.
The unseen strength of woman,
Bearing the slow insult
Of one gray hair,
Knowing that soon she’ll have to add
Dye to the collection
Of tint and color and paint,
Because the men stop paying
Once youth checks out.
The unseen strength of woman,
With an eye for cloth swaths
And a penchant for fabric
And hands that know another language
Stitched silently across the hem line.
The unspoken sacrifice.
The unseen strength of woman,
Buried beneath a waistline of toil
Or the perfection scraped by
In a perfectly plucked eyebrow;
They pass each other in the street and
One nods to the other,
And both vow
Never to betray the other –
Weary.
So, I’m a starving artist. Figuratively. My treatment team would get on me if I were actually starving.
But anyhoo, I’m a starving artist who loves animals and intends to be a vet someday. But the thing about becoming a vet – I must first go to vet school, which means I must first pay for vet school.
Well darn. That’s an inconvenient wrinkle.
Though vet school is over a year away, I’m starting to save up now. And I’m hoping that some of you wouldn’t mind helping – in exchange for a poem or few. I’ve published my second e-book, Tales of Life, and the royalties from its sales are going into my vet school fund.
Tales of Life is a collection of poems that are, simply, about life. They are tales of Mondays and scraped knees, of TV dinners and apartment buildings. They are tales of beauty in the commonplace, of second glances given to the quotidienne.
I hope you find as much wonder in the everyday as I do.
Enjoy.
Published my first e-book! Tales of An Early Morning is a collection of poems and short stories with a temporal aspect. The book is divided into three sections: Tales of Night, Tales of Coffee, and the namesake section, Tales of An Early Morning.
The book is dedicated to the Wildlife Waystation, the animal sanctuary I volunteer at. All royalties from the books sales go to support the Waystation. Hope you all enjoy!
Quill Aquiver 
The Fear of What Comes Next
18 AugRecently, there was a Times article entitled ‘Having It All Without Having Children.’ I haven’t read the entire piece, but my impression is that it generally discusses views on having children and why that is or is not a good idea for various couples and how attitudes are changing about the “selfishness” of child-free couples.
Now, since I haven’t actually read the entire article I can’t guarantee this, but I got the feeling that it probably didn’t cover a few of the reasons that women I’ve known have had for being hesitant to have children. Reasons that will cause most people to just shut their mouths and nod.
But I also thought of the women I’ve known who could have had those same reasons and went ahead and had children anyway. And honestly, I think those women are incredibly brave. To decide to take the risk and have another kid after a couple already has one child born with autism or blindness or leukemia… To decide to try again, and again and again and again, after the trauma of miscarrying… To decide to invest a piece of what made your soul and your biology in another person when you’ve been diagnosed with clinical depression or bipolar disorder or bulimia… I’m not sure I could make those decisions.
And so this is a poem for all those women who have stared in the face of the fear of what comes next, and had a child anyway. And this is a poem, too, for all those who have known that fear and quietly, determinedly said no, I will not.
The Fear of What Comes Next
You look at me and wonder –
what if it would turn out just like you?
You think about the nights you have lost,
rocking me in a cradle, colicky and cold
beyond any warmth the touch of your fingers would give.
You think about the moments upon moments of delusion,
when you hoped that this was just a phase,
and the little face looking back at you would smile some day,
and call you mama.
You wonder if the next one, like me, would never, not once,
be able to say that word.
You decided you will not give nature and chance
any more cruel opportunity.
You look at me and wonder –
what if it would turn out just like you?
You think about the nights you have lost,
staring bleary-eyed at that reflection in the mirror,
across the sink, over the pill bottles your shaky hand fingers.
You think about the moments upon moments of delusion,
when you hoped that this was just a phase,
and the nakedness looking back at you would smile some day,
and call you unbroken.
You wonder if the next one, like me, would never, not once,
be able to say that word.
You decided you will not give nature and chance
any more cruel opportunity.
And so they turn away from him, with that damn hopeful look in his eyes,
and say it’s late. Perhaps in the morning.
Tags: addiction, baby, chance, child, childfree, choices, decisions, disorder, father, fear, future, hard, kid, marriage, miscarriage, mother, motherhood, nature, parent, parenthood, poem, social commentary, woman, womanhood