How could you!
How could you
say,
you are so sensitive!
ExTREmely sensitive
to the feelings
of others -
when You
cause me
such EXquisite pain?!Don’t you know
the acts and deeds
done through love
infuse the soul?Can’t you see
mere words
of love only appease
the mind -
and seldom convince
the heart..?Sensitive my ass!
So long (gone) baby!
Carried you for far too long -
today awoke and put you down.
One looong last drag,
one looong last ring,
at last this half-life habit gone!
Tamer
old man geezer neighbored ‘hi’
green teeth sugar smile on mutant head,
made me round up puppy dog
in shed that housed his dusty clunker,
made me think doggie a prize
to keep, if I would place the tie
around his neck “and just keep calm,
he’s a stray but he’ll make a fine pet”
said this farmhand, my young mom’s friend -
he knew about the wren I tamed,
and my bunnies from under the porch nest,
mom told him about my way with the wilds
so I knew why he picked me
child that I was -
it took awhile for that stray to gain my trust
“you’re a good girl, now hold him still”
I never saw it coming! but I can still hear it
reverberating off thin tin siding and, oh my God!
strange Elmer’s crazyface *flash* smokinghand!
frozen in time, this memory, this heart,
and the way its body went thump thump
on the gravel behind his truck to the dump.
Pax domini..vobiscum……..(Father)
You, mild mannered man…………(crave me),
your quick temper hid from all…(save me),
watch communion plate pass hand to
hand Old Woman mutters what a good man
humble Loving Father lucky woman that she is -
forgive us our sins Preacher man!
Every Sunday starts out righteous – thank God!
for Wednesday nights are voices
crashing through closed doors
sharp as cracking! whips! and talk-in-tongues!
(heralding the binge once more)
O heavenly Jesus, save me
from your mild mannered man,
for I know only contempt -
holding his false image to my face -
wear your mask.
You’re right. Words can never touch the heart. Feelings have a knack of communicating without words.
By: wordlywise on September 4, 2007
at 11:07 am
I’m happy to learn you think this way, too, worldlywise. :) I consider this one of my “attitoot” pieces, so I hope you took it in that vein. :) And, thank you for stopping by to comment. I appreciate it and feedback helps me to grow as a writer (I hope :)
By: janetleigh on September 4, 2007
at 11:50 pm
your writing is special.
By: Jak on October 2, 2007
at 10:36 pm
Gosh, I’m glad someone feels that way about my work, and so nice of you to tell me so, Jak. Although I’m inclined to think everyone’s artistic expression is special; it takes guts to let one’s personal feelings hang out for all the world to see and scrutinize. You make me feel very welcome here in the WordPress.com community. I appreciate that. :)
By: janetleigh on October 3, 2007
at 12:39 am
Hot rant at a pack of devils. “Tamer” was terrifying.
Tamer is my take on an actual childhood trauma, sad to say. :(
By: brendanblue on February 13, 2008
at 4:33 pm
I had a childhood friend who could call birds out of trees. She would find them broken, take them in, heal them, and they would follow her around. Same with a dog named buckshot, who scared the hell out of everybody else. You have a gift. Sorry you had this experience though. Peace, baby.
Wow. Sounds like your childhood friend might have been me, Rick, ;> because I also had a bird-friend that used to hang outside our back door waiting for me every day. It would hop up on my shoulder and just sit there for a while. I remember bringing it in one night to sleep in a little basket I’d prepared for it. Well, some time between my going to bed and getting up the next morning, my younger sister took the basket and put it up on the kitchen heater and I found it dead when I woke up. My sister had “tucked” it in to sleep, too. Yah. I also had some baby rabbits that we put into a little pen under the back stairs to keep them from wild animals at night and no one was allowed to go into the pen but me. The same sister snuck into the pen and tried to catch these little critters darting here and there and Her Clumbsiness stepped on a number of them and killed them. too. I thought of her as The Bad Seed. As though these experiences weren’t enough pet-trauma to last a lifetime, years later when we moved from MN to CT against our juvenile will, my parents gave us 4 sisters all black kittens from the neighbors litter. We called them Black Midnight, Black Shadow, Black Princess, and now I can’t remember the last name. We had them for less than a year; one day while walking to school in the morning through the short distance of woods behind our house, we came across our cats strung up on rope stretched between 2 trees on either side of the path. They were dead and charred. Some psycho had set our kittens on fire. We had nightmares for years over that trauma.
The dog I helped kill as a youngster in Tamer poem above took a real toll on my sensitive soul. Elmer drove the dead dog a short distance from my house to the side of the ball park across the street and buried it but not deep enough. I went over there every day for a good number of days, sobbing and asking the dog to forgive me for what I had done. I can still remember all the stages of decomposition and horrible stench I sat through while crying and talking to this dead dog. Sorry if I’ve bored you with this background story, Rick. I guess it still isn’t out of my system after all these years. sigh.
By: rick mobbs on March 30, 2008
at 1:16 am
When I was 8 years old we were renting a small farm, and there was chicken ranch next door. A stray dog wandered in, and it became “my pooch”. It was part Shepherd and part mutt, huge and black, and I dubbed it Midnight.
My stepfather was summoned next door one morning, and come to find out Midnight had gotten into the chicken house the night before and killed dozens of prize pullets. The neighbor told my Dad that if he destroyed the dog, he would not have to be sued of pay damages. Art came to me, with his rifle on his shoulder. “Put the leash on Midnight, Butch,” he said. We walked together up into the north pasture. We had brought a shovel. Art, who was very muscular, dug the grave. “Tell your dog to get in the hole,” he said. I did, and the dog complied. He licked my hand before I unhooked him and ordered him to leap into eternity. Art shot him with his 30/30 carbine. The barrol was only inches from my head. The shot was dead center between the dog’s eyes. He went down hard, with one quick yelp. Then Art stood there while I used the shovel and filled in the hole, the terrible shot still ringing in my ears. Sometimes late at night I still hear the shot, and the yelp, and my heart is torn asunder again.
Glenn
Glenn, I so wanted to write you last night after reading your dog (horror) story, but I fled in tears, instead. I could only absorb about a third of your story at a time. I literally had to stop reading so I wouldn’t freak out. I thought my experience was a horror, but I can’t even imagine going through what you did – at such a tender young age. I’d probably go catatonic on everyone and become the crazy aunt who lives in the attic. I’m sorry to be quick to interject myself into a personal story of yours, but what the ^%$#@ was your stepfather thinking!?! Was this the beginning of a downward spiral in your relationship with Art (I’ll bite my tongue at this misnomer..)? Again, I apologize for seeming so judgmental of your stepfather, but geezes, having gone through a similar trauma I’m pretty sensitive about the judgment of some adults. (I’m near tears again. Gosh, but it must be true that we relive things done to us in childhood – as a child – all over again.) May God grant you an end to your nightmares over Midnight, Glenn, and give you peace from an act of cruelty not of your making and powerless to escape. We have the power to make something good out of an evil so I shall find comfort in knowing you are the one person who has endured that which I have experienced and have to live with forever. I hope in telling your story the pain it holds over your mind ceases and becomes powerless, my friend.
By: marlowe44 on April 11, 2008
at 3:39 pm
Yes, it helps to write about, to share these childhood traumas. Some say to relive them is foolish, but as Frederick Nietsche said, “Whatever does not kill you, makes you stronger.” Very nihilist, very practical, and very sad too for we sensitive types. I am sorry if my tale made you upset. Now in my 60’s, I too am moved to tears much too easily. I remember the interview with Dustin Hoffman on ACTOR’S STUDIO, and he could not even talk about his father without weeping. Emotion rides my shoulders like a feather cape, always ready to tickle my nose and prime my tear ducts.
Your poem FATHER is also powerful, and angry, and held close to your chest. Too often the taciturn and the “mild mannered” do wear a mask for most to see. But the children, the wife, the pets–they see the other side of that one-eyed Jack. I have had to struggle most of my life with anger management. I move to anger as easily as I am moved to tears. Anger resides in my neck, close to my eyes. It began to live like a parasite within me probably as a defensive mechanism. I never knew my real father. I had a succession of stepfathers. We moved like gypsies, ten schools to get through Elementary grades. You develop into a Type A personality, who thrives on competition and conflict. And yet poetry also resided near the heart chakra, mighty and sweet poetry–there when I needed it when I was in the service during Viet Nam, there when my heart was broken by love, by disrespect, by apathy, and by non-communication. When I read Walt Whitman as a young boy, it was liberating. I never was a slave to rhyme again. My poetry winged its way wherever it wanted. Often I could barely write fast enough to capture it. When I read William Faulkner, his two page run-on sentences, his piognant clauses–that was liberating for my narratives, my fiction, and my manuscripts.
You strike me deeply, Ms. Leigh. How wonderful that you have this forum to attract like minds, and others, and that you take the time to respond so very whole heartedly. I do feel welcomed.
Glenn
By: marlowe44 on April 14, 2008
at 11:29 am
HOW COULD YOU speaks to many of us, the misrepresentation of those we try to get to know, or think we have falled in love or lust with. If a person “tells” you that they are sensitive, it is an emotional scam. Sensitivity becomes evident through acts, through responses, through kindness, tears, touch. I recall as a sophomore in HS taking a personality profile in a psychology class. You answered general questions, and your answers or responses were charted on a graph, to the right or left of a median. The right side were the masculine traits, and the left side were feminine traits. The feminine traits were much more prevelent for me, traits like sensitivity and creativity, honesty, etc. I was dismayed that my personality had so many feminine traits. I was a strapping 15 year old, after all. I took the teacher aside, and asked him, “Does this mean I will become a homosexual?” The instructor, who was gay it turned out, laughed, and said,”No, Glenn, it means you probably will become an artist.” And that was the first guidepost on my path.
Glenn
By: marlowe44 on April 14, 2008
at 1:13 pm
Janet:
I just finished a poem about Alex. I thought you might like to see it. It, also, is on FFTR.
Ferry Fugue
Home again,
home again,
just morning till
night,
but still a delight,
parting the gray green waters,
churning up salty foam
under the bow,
passing fast
through sun breaks
and shadow,
getting a faint whiff
of the neighboring isles;
their beaches,
their forests,
their farms,
their kelp,
their driftwood.
There you stand,
spread-legged against
the wind,
with the big white deck
beneath you,
and the Sound’s spring chill
knifing through your long coat,
spreading out the tassles
on the end of your bright scarf;
wearing stylish sunglasses,
naively waiting for the sun;
tall collar up
like a spinnaker
before the breeze;
hands deep
in your warm pockets,
humming and smiling,
hearing those lovely melodies
winging to you
with the gulls,
and the soft thump-thump
of the great ship’s throbbing engine,
with the lilt of children’s
laughter,
and the high pitched
woodwind bark
of someone’s lap dog.
Then you notice
that old man
in the Greek fisherman’s hat,
sitting back on a bench,
out of the breeze,
holding tightly onto
a colorfully wrapped
cafeteria sandwich
in his strong old hands.
But for now,
your dock
is in sight,
and you must
descend to the car deck,
and ready yourself
to clank over the metal planks
on your way
to greet Charles
and the cats.
Glenn Buttkus April 2008
I am tempted, with your permission to post more of your poetry on my site. Some of it I really respond to.
Glenn
Hello, Glenn! I’ve just seen this comment and read this beautiful lovely poem, but I’m going to have to come back later, it’s 3:30AM and I’m falling asleep here. I just wanted you to know I spotted it and will come back…) (And I’ll be by FFTR to catch up as I haven’t been for a few days. I haven’t been well.) Wishing you a perfect day!!
By: marlowe44 on April 24, 2008
at 10:43 am
Janet:
I have gotten myself worked up by high gas prices and Year 5 in Iraq. The following poetry came cascading out of me the other day:
Four Buck Gas
This morning
I stood in the pre-dawn chill
and pumped 4-buck gas
into my pick up.
Suddenly consumed
with unspeakable anger,
I shook my free fist
at the Shell sign—
standing there tall
and sullen
and silent,
arrogantly golden
flashing
its $4.15
for regular gas
message.
I thought about
The Bush War
and what it is costing
us/me,
and about the fat cat
oil barons
who hang out with Junior
swilling Lone Star
and counting their tax-free
trillions.
The New Millennium Crusades
suddenly swam belligerently
into my cortical net,
witnessing Bush stir up
the Muslim wasp nest,
sending our youth
into harm’s way
to face the barbs and stingers,
RPG’s, roadside explosions,
and suicide bombers
who themselves
are barely old enough
to enjoy
the promised 100 virgins
in Jihad Paradise.
A few yesterdays ago
there we were
post 9-11 in 2003,
wanting to strike back,
wanting revenge
for the terrible toppling of our towers,
and the callous crushing
of the innocent thousands,
as death was brought to us
on our own silver wings,
diving and plunging
straight down,
laden with high-pitched screams
from jet engines pushed to full throttle
and passengers hoarse from fear.
Something had to be done.
Who could we punish?
Who could we kill
to satiate our blood lust?
George W. Bush, Jr.
and all his father’s posse
smiled like hyenas
in a silent pack,
and their greedy index fingers
pointed back,
straight at Iraq;
telling us repeatedly
that right there was the heart
of darkness,
the den of murderers,
the scourge of the earth;
plotters, terrorists, and enemies—
that Bush was ready
to lead us
into a holy war
that would finish the job
left undone by his daddy
in 1991—
that as righteous patriots
we should take on
the rag tag Republican Army
and run that ruthless fox,
Saddam Hussein,
to ground;
for he was a madman,
an abuser of human rights,
a killer,
a dictator,
a womanizer,
a sodomizer;
and not only
did he absolutely possess
weapons of mass destruction,
but he fully intended
to send unmanned squadrons
of drones
to our eastern shores,
that were fully laden
with biological germ warfare payloads.
75 senators were duped, cajoled,
and convinced,
thus launching
Operation Iraqi Liberation;
soon to morph into
Operation Iraqi Freedom.
During the one month assault,
we overran Hussein’s finest troops
like shooting coyotes
from horseback,
and it only cost us
139 American lives.
“Outstanding!”
was on the commander’s lips,
followed by,
“Let’s stick around a while now,
and assist the Iraqis into forging
a Democracy.”
We all recall
the smirking grin
and lying eyes
of warmonger
Donald Rumsfeld;
and that late afternoon
five years ago this May
on the USS Abraham Lincoln,
when Commander in Chief,
President Bush
emerged from a fighter
wearing a flight suit,
stood spread-legged on the naked steel deck,
waving his thunder bolt helmet
and declaring,
“Mission Accomplished!”
And presently
here we are,
knee deep in Year 5,
fighting “asymmetric warfare”,
without front lines,
against a faceless enemy
that hides in
and melts into
the civilian population;
just like before
in 1964—
except now we are immersed in
and surrounded by
civil war and insurgency,
as we are being branded
the Occupying Force,
once again;
spilling blood for greed
and democracy—
being taught hard lessons;
like we cannot curtail
the flow of Jihad insurgents
by cutting the head off the Hydra,
or its whelps,
or its lieutenants—
for new warriors
spring like cockroaches from the shadows,
craving to join the resistance
to the Infidels and Capitalists,
arriving in dark clumps daily,
like monsters rising out of the blood-soaked
waters of the Tigris and Euphrates—
making us pay
every day
for patrolling
the Sunni Triangle.
Oh God,
when will the madness end?
How much black gold
has to be pumped
into profit
from the Iraqi
fat oil reserves?
How many more
retired Special Forces
will have to be recruited
by Blackwater
to protect Bush’s
real agenda?
The numbers for Y5
are staggering!
U.S. dead: 4,079.
U.S. wounded: 30,000.
Contractors dead: 1,028.
Contractors wounded: 10,569.
Iraqi death toll: 1,000,000.
Iraqi combatants dead: 10,800.
Insurgents dead: 22,807.
Detainees: 43,000.
Like in the 60’s
when the carnage
in Viet Nam
was broadcast to us daily,
splashing red and futile
on our living room television screens—
today
our forced occupancy
of Iraq
is beamed immediately by satellite
to every home,
for all of us to see
and cringe
as the pride of our loins
are kicking down doors
and pumping hot lead
from their Mossberg shotguns
into the Islamic populous—
are being ambushed
around every corner,
green zone or not;
witnessing the riddling
of those poorly armored Humvees,
those High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles,
with bullets bought in black markets,
originally manufactured by us
and sent to Saddam
when it was his job
to fight the Iranians
for us.
Our young men
and women,
do their duty,
without hesitation,
becoming hard-hearted
and stone-jawed—
even though many of them
may be stop-lossed
or extended
by their loving government
to stay
in the fray;
professional targets,
standing atop
an M1 Abrams battle tank,
or racing down some dangerous narrow alley
in their M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle,
or screetching through those
mean Moslem streets in Strykers—
the dead brown skies above
choked
with Apaches, Kiowa Warriors, Black Hawks, and Chinooks—
the dirty twilight punctuated
by the deep throb
of dozens
of .50 caliber lethal heavy machine guns—
patrols partially protected
by howling M249 SAWS.
Yes, Lord,
we see it all;
and feel overwhelmed
with intense grief and anguish
as this cavalcade of cavalry and contractors
are at this very moment
toiling in the acrid white dust
of the Middle East,
providing the opportunity
for the petroleum bullies
to force me
to have to pump their goddamn
4 buck gas,
and shake my inept fist
at a stupid sea shell,
and snarl terribly
at those barons unseen,
but most certainly
felt.
Glenn Buttkus June 2008
By: marlowe44 on June 2, 2008
at 11:01 am
I am now doing my “thing” with some of the terrific prose and poetry that Rick Mobbs has offered up on his site, MINE ENEMY GROWS OLDER; that you introduced me to here on this blog. Anyway, I reworked on of his great narrative prose tales, and it now looks like this:
You all have read A MOODY LITTLE PIECE OF NONSENSE as written by Rick Mobbs, because that form is how it appears on his site, MINE ENEMY GROWS OLDER. But his painting, his words, would not let things be, nor me–be, so I tweeked it, as I am prone to do, with Rick’s permission, astonishment, and gratitude.
Moody Nonsense: Redeux
Water is the sound
of small boys
throwing stones
and chunks of iron
and old bones
into the ocean.
Water is the sound
of bones dissolving.
Water is a black sound.
Is there a blacker sound?
“Who goes there?”
asks the moon.
The moon had been
sleeping in the sun,
just the crescent
of its eye
is open.
“We do,”
say the neck bones.
“We do,”
say the vertebra
along the upper spine.
“We do,”
say the plates and blades
and sticks of bones,
the ligaments,
the balls and sockets
of the shoulders.
“Hold us up,”
they say to the moon.
“I can’t,”
the moon replies.
“Your strings are broken.”
The swish
and swirling chuckle
of the ocean
as it sucks
the marrow
from the bones
and grinds them down
and pulverizes them?
A distant sound,
like church bells ringing
from the sandy cones
of anthills.
A pure sound,
with tiny undertones
of gravity,
and rain approaching?
Rain through fig trees,
rain through broad leaves,
rain through palm trees,
rain through sand,
washing nutrients
from tired bones.
“What of our addition?”
say the old ones,
“Our subtraction?
Our multiplication?
Our division?”
“Your calculus is sand,
your sand is glass,
your glass is time,
your time is mine,”
the wind hisses
through teeth closed
against the rain.
”I am coming for you now.
Are you ready?
Get ready then.”
The old guys
hoot and cackle
so as the wind
removes
their arms and legs,
their livers
and at last,
their heads–
Without heads
they can’t remember
anything.
“Begin again,”
the moon suggests.
“Start with a rocking motion.
One starfish from the ocean,
two starfishes on the sand,
three turtles
and a house of glass,
an hourglass,
a box of time.
A zero moving in a stream.
A little thing.
A rose.
A rose is missing.”
“Where is my rose?”
I asked the moon.
I was with the other kids
tossing things into the ocean.
I had found a piece of bone.
Raised threads across
an etched surface.
Minute breaks and cracks,
star patterns.
One end sheared.
Inside were hidden chambers,
hollow rooms,
supporting columns.
I felt something.
The wind laughed.
I knew the moon
winked at the wind.
I chucked the thing
into the ocean
and heard the sound
a grain of sand makes
when it separates
and falls,
featherless
and mostly round,
through the hourglass
when the glass
is opening.
“Where is my Rose?”
I ask again.
The moon says
nothing;
it seems saddened.
The wind puts bow
to string
nd turns.
His audience
is the universe
that I am standing in.
I cover my ears
but I still hear
the sound.
Sad notes run down
the string
and I am crying.
“Why am I crying?”
I ask the moon.
“Your Rose,”
the moon prompts kindly.
“Hush,”
says the wind.
The wind
is always hushing
someone.
Now the scene has
changed.
The boys are gone.
Gone the ocean, beaches, sand.
Water is a black sound
where creation was.
Water is an opening
in the wind.
Water is a mindless thing.
The wind is endless repetition.
Water is oblivion,
my hearts longing.
“Chide me, then.”
I say to the wind.
“Say something.”
Willows weep around me
but they are water trees,
like cypress.
They were meant to weep
and go on weeping.
I can’t ask the moon
for answers.
The moon won’t answer
direct questions.
Focus
on the crashing breakers
and the star
above the sound.
“I want to know who you are.”
I say to the star.
It danced
with rose and amber
through horizons
layered without end,
mists–the final breath
of friends, enemies, lovers and companions.
Endless generations
and that single point
which burned so fine
an opening
through every one.
For a second
the dots connect
and then the mist rolls in
again.
I reach
and see my hand
dissolve.
“Dissolve the rest of me,”
I demand,
but the wind refuses
to hold coherent sound.
I have my thoughts,
my emotions.
I have my sense
of dread
and my well-honed sense
of longing.
I have air
but it will not carry
words.
I was upset.
It is so hard,
using prayers
when I want
to tear words
out of the sky.
Every new horizon
brings a concerto
of popping strings,
and each time
I return
I see my star
and I say,
“Come here,
come home to me.”
“I am home,”
the star sings.
“I light a world.
I can’t leave.”
“You are a coward”,
I whispered
into my tin can.
“You are not brave.
You should not
do this to me.”
She did not answer.
She did not leave,
she drew no closer,
nor did
the pattern of stars
around her
change.
“Leave them!”
I cried.
No answer.
I turned to the moon.
I explained my situation.
I said,
“No power here,
I have no power.”
“Neither you,
nor any other,”
said moon
to flower.
“And I don’t feel much
like a flower.”
“You are,”
the moon said.
“You are.”
Tell me,
how can I believe
I am a flower
when the life
I breathed for
is such a dim star,
so far away,
over so much water?
Rick Mobbs
***Gently rearranged by Glenn Buttkus
By: Glenn Buttkus on June 7, 2008
at 4:44 pm
I am not having good luck today with my old ancient Dell. I just “lost” an epic poem I helped rearrange for Rick Mobbs. I will try again:
You all have read A MOODY LITTLE PIECE OF NONSENSE as written by Rick Mobbs, because that form is how it appears on his site, MINE ENEMY GROWS OLDER. But his painting, his words, would not let things be, nor me–be, so I tweeked it, as I am prone to do, with Rick’s permission, astonishment, and gratitude.
Moody Nonsense: Redeux
Water is the sound
of small boys
throwing stones
and chunks of iron
and old bones
into the ocean.
Water is the sound
of bones dissolving.
Water is a black sound.
Is there a blacker sound?
“Who goes there?”
asks the moon.
The moon had been
sleeping in the sun,
just the crescent
of its eye
is open.
“We do,”
say the neck bones.
“We do,”
say the vertebra
along the upper spine.
“We do,”
say the plates and blades
and sticks of bones,
the ligaments,
the balls and sockets
of the shoulders.
“Hold us up,”
they say to the moon.
“I can’t,”
the moon replies.
“Your strings are broken.”
The swish
and swirling chuckle
of the ocean
as it sucks
the marrow
from the bones
and grinds them down
and pulverizes them?
A distant sound,
like church bells ringing
from the sandy cones
of anthills.
A pure sound,
with tiny undertones
of gravity,
and rain approaching?
Rain through fig trees,
rain through broad leaves,
rain through palm trees,
rain through sand,
washing nutrients
from tired bones.
“What of our addition?”
say the old ones,
“Our subtraction?
Our multiplication?
Our division?”
“Your calculus is sand,
your sand is glass,
your glass is time,
your time is mine,”
the wind hisses
through teeth closed
against the rain.
”I am coming for you now.
Are you ready?
Get ready then.”
The old guys
hoot and cackle
so as the wind
removes
their arms and legs,
their livers
and at last,
their heads–
Without heads
they can’t remember
anything.
“Begin again,”
the moon suggests.
“Start with a rocking motion.
One starfish from the ocean,
two starfishes on the sand,
three turtles
and a house of glass,
an hourglass,
a box of time.
A zero moving in a stream.
A little thing.
A rose.
A rose is missing.”
“Where is my rose?”
I asked the moon.
I was with the other kids
tossing things into the ocean.
I had found a piece of bone.
Raised threads across
an etched surface.
Minute breaks and cracks,
star patterns.
One end sheared.
Inside were hidden chambers,
hollow rooms,
supporting columns.
I felt something.
The wind laughed.
I knew the moon
winked at the wind.
I chucked the thing
into the ocean
and heard the sound
a grain of sand makes
when it separates
and falls,
featherless
and mostly round,
through the hourglass
when the glass
is opening.
“Where is my Rose?”
I ask again.
The moon says
nothing;
it seems saddened.
The wind puts bow
to string
nd turns.
His audience
is the universe
that I am standing in.
I cover my ears
but I still hear
the sound.
Sad notes run down
the string
and I am crying.
“Why am I crying?”
I ask the moon.
“Your Rose,”
the moon prompts kindly.
“Hush,”
says the wind.
The wind
is always hushing
someone.
Now the scene has
changed.
The boys are gone.
Gone the ocean, beaches, sand.
Water is a black sound
where creation was.
Water is an opening
in the wind.
Water is a mindless thing.
The wind is endless repetition.
Water is oblivion,
my hearts longing.
“Chide me, then.”
I say to the wind.
“Say something.”
Willows weep around me
but they are water trees,
like cypress.
They were meant to weep
and go on weeping.
I can’t ask the moon
for answers.
The moon won’t answer
direct questions.
Focus
on the crashing breakers
and the star
above the sound.
“I want to know who you are.”
I say to the star.
It danced
with rose and amber
through horizons
layered without end,
mists–the final breath
of friends, enemies, lovers and companions.
Endless generations
and that single point
which burned so fine
an opening
through every one.
For a second
the dots connect
and then the mist rolls in
again.
I reach
and see my hand
dissolve.
“Dissolve the rest of me,”
I demand,
but the wind refuses
to hold coherent sound.
I have my thoughts,
my emotions.
I have my sense
of dread
and my well-honed sense
of longing.
I have air
but it will not carry
words.
I was upset.
It is so hard,
using prayers
when I want
to tear words
out of the sky.
Every new horizon
brings a concerto
of popping strings,
and each time
I return
I see my star
and I say,
“Come here,
come home to me.”
“I am home,”
the star sings.
“I light a world.
I can’t leave.”
“You are a coward”,
I whispered
into my tin can.
“You are not brave.
You should not
do this to me.”
She did not answer.
She did not leave,
she drew no closer,
nor did
the pattern of stars
around her
change.
“Leave them!”
I cried.
No answer.
I turned to the moon.
I explained my situation.
I said,
“No power here,
I have no power.”
“Neither you,
nor any other,”
said moon
to flower.
“And I don’t feel much
like a flower.”
“You are,”
the moon said.
“You are.”
Tell me,
how can I believe
I am a flower
when the life
I breathed for
is such a dim star,
so far away,
over so much water?
Rick Mobbs
***Gently rearranged by Glenn Buttkus
By: Glenn Buttkus on June 7, 2008
at 4:46 pm