Small Words

Almost Poetry…

Most writers love reading, and most poets love poetry, that’s why I don’t seriously consider myself as either. I rarely read books and have no particular interest in poetry. Any attempts I’ve made to write fiction have failed miserably. But throughout my life I’ve been driven by a desire to express the complexity of my emotional states, especially those that overwhelm me when romance goes wrong, and it’s been very helpful as a way of coping. On many occasion my anguish was suspended as I sat, pen poised over tear-drenched paper, searching for the words that most accurately describe my pain. Words helped me survive my own intensity.

Being alone in old age has brought relief from the distress of romance gone wrong. This first poem was written recently.

REFLECTING

That’s what you do when you get old

You sit

And think

And remember

And, if you are lucky

You laugh to yourself

Laugh about all your mishaps

And painful relationships

Loving, passionate, disastrous, sexy, long-gone

Relationships.

You laugh to yourself

About the whole world

And people

Friends and enemies

Not so many enemies

If you are lucky.

If you are lucky

You are not bitter

You don’t sit

And think of who did you wrong

And that the world didn’t appreciate you

Your lips pursed in anger

In sorrow

In resentment

Fuming

As you quietly sit

Watching the clouds

The sky

As my mother sat

Looking out her high window

Draped in blankets

Surrounded by electric heaters

To warm her cold, old bones

Yet nothing could warm

Her ice-cold fury

With life

With everybody who let her down

In her mind.

As she sat

Watching the sky

I sit

Watching the sky

Waiting to see

If the sense of life’s tragic comedy

Leaves me

Leaves me to sit and watch the sky

And feel bitter resentment as I come close to leaving my life

This funny, tragic, complex life.

Poems from an earlier time.

MORNING

Morning

Soft blue sky, soft fuzzy brain

Words that wounded, slicing through black night

Are blunted by morning light

Tears and pain shed in the dark

Gone

I’m wrapped in apathy’s tranquilizing embrace.

Cool, detached

With sore red eyes

I care not for bruised ego.

When you wake you will love me

Remorsefully

The bitter sweet desire to inflict hurt

Forgotten in gentle sleep

Small core of resentment pushed back

You will be ready to resume life as a loving couple.

The power to hurt is now in my hands

Bitter sweet desire to hurt

Is contagious.

SUDDENLY

Suddenly you are awake

Completely

Lying in bed, eyes open to the blackness

Every mortal fear lurking

Just out of reach.

You try hard to think like a normal person

Try to remember what it’s like to just go on living

Things to do, distractions everywhere

But you can’t

Life as you know it is asleep, you are alone

So you lie there for an eternity

Wrestling with unnamed fears until

With a sad sense of relief

You notice the blackness turning to grey.

Standing in the garden

Soft grey becomes lighter

With every heavy lift of your eyelids

Fuzzy, ghostly shapes become clearer

You feel tranquility seeping through your skin

Grass is wet under your feet but you hardly notice

You are absorbed by the calm solemnity of the garden

In the half light

The luminous quality of the green

You are distracted, taken out of your petty, quivering self

Your twisting, turning mind agonizing over nothing

And everything

Is quieted.

SOMETIMES

Sometimes everything is just…..

Bad

No acute pain

Senses sleep

As you watch his washing dry

Through soulless eyes.

The clock ticks, the shopping is done

Another load of washing is in the machine

You hear its rhythmic, slapping water

And wonder

If you love him.

A distant dog howls his nine to five loneliness

And you wonder

What to do about love

Disappearing under a heavy blanket of resentment, pain and anger

Till all feelings are ground down

To grey apathy

And neither of you can see a way out.

You become resigned to your fate

A slow death

In suburbia.

Of course there was a way out and before long we both saw it. I packed my belongings into my car and drove away, but love hadn’t disappeared completely.

LOVE REVIVED

Then the sun came out

Radiant warmth and light

Tenderly I hold his head in my hands

As a wave of love for him washes over me.

The leaden clouds that were hiding the golden light

Have parted

My cumbersome sorrow fell from me.

We hold each other as if just one creature

Cruelly given two sets of eyes

To see things differently.

So close we hold each other

To squeeze away the space

Between us.