Exquisite pain,
Like sharp stones
Cutting into the surface of calm
Sending ripples on alone
To wake the rest.
Molten rock,
Melting joints while
Muscles smolder, sweat, and turn
Pooling in a vile
Puddle of suffering.
Pain in the depths,
The dark bowels of fleshly frame;
Ligament and bone,
Blood and tissue, pain
As the new normal.
I was born in captivity,
But on my father’s knee
I heard tales of the homeland:
The land of the jubilee.
I’ve grown, bones stretching,
Skin pulled like a warm coat
On muscles enabling my motion,
But it is never my abode.
I’ve grown inside
The old man’s memories:
The temple at dawn,
The new moon revelries,
The smell of the altar
And the song of the dove
Smoldering and yearning for a home
I’ve seen nothing of,
And it is burning
Always blazing in the pitch black
When the old men said goodbye,
Over the strong, unbroken backs
Of their captors.
The flames of utter destruction
Dancing on stolen bronze,
The silver and gold abductions,
Flickering with screams
Wails of sorrow from the feeble
The sole survivors stumbling through
The blood of their own people,
The clatter of armored enemy.
I’ve seen it all in their eyes,
Heard it in mournful sobs
And whispered lullabies.
In captivity, I cannot know
Does any stone still stand,
Or smolder, or smoke, or can
We ever find our homeland again?
I face my home, which can’t be seen,
And turn my back to where I’m sent.
I praise the God of Just and Merciful
I pour my heart out: I Repent.
I am a Protestant daughter;
My Catholic mother
Birthed me in the water
And I drifted farther
Than she would reach.
I washed up on Neverland.
I read the works of the lost boys
Who also traveled unmanned
Bereft of the pride and poise
That mitigates confession.
An orphan community
A ragamuffin clan,
Who found unity in the impunity
They drank from the hand
Of their Father.
You wrote me off the moment
I seemed like too much trouble,
Pausing only to gawk,
To kick over some rubble,
To find a tale to tell.
I guess I can’t blame you;
You have so much to protect,
And there is nothing so safe
As silence and neglect,
And how could you know
I was never a threat?
I’ve howled at the moon
Rising and shining and twirling
A pale dancer on a dark stage
I’ve embraced the swoon.
I ingested the bay
Travelling many miles
To drink its Atlantic mother,
To live the crash and sway
I belong in the sand,
In the violence and beauty
And severity of her coiled arms
And crested hands.
Am I dying of drought
The rain weeps
In ocean fragments
They runoff devout
And they’ll make it home before me.
I feel shaky these days.
On the surface, all remains
But underneath the plates are drifting
The fault line is yawning
And stretching awake and shifting
All I know and need, but I
Do not cry out in fearful demands,
I wait in rigor
For His familiar hands
To pull me near
Again.
And when you loved me, what you loved
Existed in your eyes
It was as real as love is real,
Unconstrained by guise
And what you saw as good in me
Bloomed gossamer in your view
I was good and I was yours-
It was true because you were true.
And when you left me vulnerable
Exposed to harsher winds,
The good and true you gave to me
Could no more make amends
With the whip of gale, and bite of cold,
And absence of your devotion
Who I reflected in your eyes
Wept and died as broken
And the woman standing in her place
Who speaks vengeance in her scorn
Is just the dried and dead remains;
The blossomless tangle of thorns.
When your diverted love ran dry
And you no longer looked at me,
All you loved in me the most
Ceased to be.
We walked along, side by side,
You, following the path, and I
Leaning to peek in the canyon.
Glancing to see my presumed companion
Has run ahead without me.
You pursued the course,
And I lingered to gaze at remorse
Who is lovely from behind
While blind, while disinclined
To turn on me, to see
What I put myself up to some days.
He is cruel when he returns my gaze.
I wander the fringes of our route,
Do you go on without me, or wander about
To find me again?
I am aimless. I cannot wend
Through these dark woods,
I cannot find my way to good,
Without you as my guide.
Will you walk again, side by side?
I write to you
No more
When you are still
Just who you are
And the night chills
Me from your far
Shoulders.
I think of you
Just barely
Like a book, ill-gotten,
Neither finished
Nor forgotten
A memory diminished
But not vanished.
I speak to you
In silence.
The faded ember
Has burned my hands
The scars remember
The heart understands
What memory won’t render.
Oh pale moon, swimming
In the inky black, spinning
Always around, and again around
Your gravity’s weight strikes my ground
Forming tides to push and pull
This twirling sphere, swirling full
Of water, earth, wind and flame
While you cower sterile, tamed
Dust and rock and voicelessly
Pace and fret so noiselessly
Mostly covered in shadow, undetected
But only known by light reflected.
viewingcamelot 