Sunday Writing Prompt “Everyday Objects”

The Window

He pressed his palm to the glass. The pane was cold, its expression sullen. The rain had stopped more than an hour ago but the sun remained hidden behind layers of ash-colored gauze. He hadn’t been outside for months and in that time the seasons had changed without so much as an acknowledgment. No one had written, rang, pinged, or visited in over a week. He’d imposed his absence without much consideration for anyone’s feelings, his own included. Even if desired how was he ever to return to his old life? He was unrecognizable even to himself, even amidst the gradations that he alone had witnessed. His beard was long and gnarled like the roots of an upended tree. Shadows gathered about his crevices. His clothes were rumpled and malodorous. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a shower or brushed his teeth. His nails were worried to the quick, coagulated blood stuck to his cuticles. His hands looked old, his face looked old, even his skin seemed out of place on its dilapidated frame. The window’s gaze was steady and patient. He saw nothing of his reflection in the glass, only his own backyard which in neglect, had grown wild. Piles of rotten apples spilled over the lawn collecting vermin and insects alike. Inside was even worse. The air was thick and meaty, food deliquesced in the sinks, discarded and unwashed garments littered the floor. Dust and decay gathered about him and he could feel himself submitting to them by degrees. A towering stone wall prevented him from seeing into the adjacent property, all he saw when looking out was his own walled in lawn, with its dying and disheveled flowers and it’s mealy, brown harvest. The window groaned beneath a penitent wind. “What have I done?” He repeated (as if in response) three times each version more shrill than the one preceding.

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Connection

Why is blindness a prerequisite of faith?

The truth can withstand deliberation

and if it cannot then can it be called absolute?

Neither proof nor patent, neither clutch nor crutch,

I am not without horror, without shape or contrast.

I live among others in the isolating patterns

of my perceptual field. This is the price of self,

the feeling of loneliness that comes

from being misunderstood and the callousness

of maintaining one’s discriminations

whatever the cost to others.

The ego cannot be discarded,

the trick is in recognizing

that the identity is fluid,

a process rather than a product.

 

By maintaining rigid boundaries

everything and everyone becomes

an enemy to be subdued or vanquished.

But if we regard others as aspects

of a vast and benevolent universe

then they become teachers, nuances

of our very own being with a purpose

unique and yet inseparable from our own.

Exorcism

I curtail the prodigal blue of your souring gaze,
a moment unto itself, a collision of scars and artifacts.
I can’t consolidate my past with your relentless nostalgia.
The stars do not cross, they drip
their nomadic splinters into my callused dreams.
Spinning circles, collecting flowers, writing
and everything we are is an exorcism
doomed to fail but perpetually administered.

Mag 303

photo by Francesca Woodman

 

You divert me.

My skeins surrender

beneath your ministrations.

A dervish of conspiracies,

a cascade of transparencies

and ineffectual metaphors.

You are a dimensional shift,

a sprig of coriander unblemished.

–

You unearth me.

My boundaries lengthen

within the contents of our excursions.

A dance with overlapping filaments,

a harrowing of congenital defaults

and unquestionable sentiments.

I am a paranormal infestation,

a morgue of shifting eidolons.

Heading South Snippets

1

Yours was the first heart

Suckered and heavily fanged

Nursing at my jugular.

That sticky red milk,

Inflating your terrible ego.

2

I, a melting candle,

Diminished all the more

For your insatiable darkness

Found myself malleable,

Featureless, my tears,

Hardening to scars.

3

My love was only a toll

Each passage, a prison,

A cost and those stalked streets

Leading nowhere.

*

Some snippets I scribbled before bed

3 Little Love Poems

Instinct

Compelled

By the same force

That incites migration

In Arctic Terns

We nest our bones

Together

Impenetrable

In the consummation

Of love

Hearth

We create within

A passage

That the other

May never want

For warmth

Generous

Your heart hangs above

Like a laboring moon

She is generous

With her expectations

But always forgiving

*

(night full of seizures almost went to the emergency room not sure how available or coherent I’ll be)

Mercy Snippets

Starfish

My disseminated veins

Extend like the arms

Of a baked starfish

Thirsting for the salt

Of an extroverted mercy

Diversion

I sought compassion

In the sea, in salient tides

That furnish diversion

Secret Garden

I’ve traveled the fathoms

Of a skeletal garden

Searching for the key

That would unlock,

Once and for all,

The crimson doors

Of my ailing mind

Scrutiny

The surface seared

A enigmatic sun stalling

In the hem

Of an empyreal robe

She held me captive

Beneath her scrutiny

I burned, as if a fiend

Held against a cross

That could not bless

Without slaughter

Abject

1

There exists

No greater fear

Then vacancy

What if

My ineptitude

Stemmed not

From inexperience

But from a lack

Of content?

*

You told me once

That my vocabulary

Was too big

To justify

That all love

Was a form of

Self-indulgence

*

Architecture

Without

A resident heart

Affectation

Without

Affection

What right

Did I have

To speak

Of happiness

When I knew

So little of her

What right

Did I have

To speak

Of moments

Not yet defiled

By a captious brain

When they stood

So few and far

Between

*

That was the day

I put aside my pen

The day

That I decided

Unequivocally

That I was nothing

I lacked

The confidence

To redeem myself

So I hid

2

I drank of hemlock

And in agony

My soul from eyes

Withdrew

Hence forth

I reside internal

Hence forth

A Judas

To my muse

*

I was inspired to write this after speaking to Bianca. Many many years ago before I had a blog when my poems were selectively and seldomly shared I received a critique that would stop me from writing for years. I had a friend I shared my poetry with regularly and for many years he was a great supporter of my work. Then one day I decided to write something quite different from my usual fare. I was quite excited about it because I felt that the only way for me to grow was to push myself out of my comfort zone and take on new challenges. He HATED the poem. His criticism went from the poem, to my worth as a human being. For several hours he questioned the very foundation of my beliefs, he said I was a phony. He did not like that I used vocabulary he was not familiar with and he felt that the poem was cliched and lacked emotional depth which led him to the conclusion that if I wrote it I was equally superficial. He’d read countless poems of mine before and had never criticized them for being superficial so I am not sure what led him to believe that in one day I had transformed into another person but that is precisely what he did believe. He truly believed I was a traitor. A person of depth was never happy and never could be happy that was the burden of genius madness and misery. I had fallen. The critique really hurt me because not only did our friendship take a blow from which it never recovered (he does not read any of my poems now and rarely talks to me) but it hit on my biggest fear, the fear that I had no emotional depth. All through my childhood I had been accused of being insensitive, cold, and emotionless. What if everything I wrote was cliché? Vacuous? What if I had no substance? No soul? Without substance I had no worth. I stopped writing for years. I tried but my confidence was destroyed I did not want to write pretty poems, I wanted to write meaningful poems. Everything I wrote seemed so empty. It was a very long time before I took the criticism and used it to strengthen my resolve as a writer. I hardly remember the years I didn’t write I became very withdrawn. I offer my poems to a much larger audience now as part of a resolve to be fearless at least where writing is concerned.

Unspoken

1

My inept tongue nests

Inside a shallow windpipe

Spurning all but script

2

I adjust my smile

Three times before withdrawing

My heart completely

3

Starless truths gather

Like magpies in the cartridge

Of a trusted pen

–

Excising dead flesh

I burgeon pink and fertile

From a would be grave

*

I really couldn’t write today I was much too distracted and nervous. I had an appointment with a counselor. I was dreading it but in the end the woman was very nice. I feel embarrassed now after the fact. Did I make myself look healthier than I am? I tend to gloss over my problems when I get nervous. I also laugh when I get nervous. Did I come off as whiny? Or cruel? I told her I wasn’t happy with my Neurologist and I feel very bad about that now.  Ugh…guilt. I did manage to tell her about my social anxiety, memory problems, and desire for more independence maybe even taking on part-time manual labor sort of job something strait-forward and not to people intense. I didn’t mention my past in a way I want to talk about it because I feel it is affecting me and I think it will be helpful in drawing a more complete picture. I don’t want to spend session after session on my past though, I want to focus on concrete future goals, but I think it is necessary because it was unhealthy.

Also I submitted this to Carbon Noise Poetry

http://kshawnedgar.wordpress.com/2013/09/15/quarantine/

Egoism Snippets

1

Who exists

That does not euphemize

With metaphor?

Who exists

That speaks of their faults

With neither pride

Nor placebo?

2

I have lied

To spare myself

I do not

Know how to face

Your pain

Without my ego

Assuming

A comparative

Misfortune

–

I do not

Know how to court

Your brilliance

Without

Turning on

Artificial lights

That I might not

In proximity

Darken

3

I was not born a poet

I neither command

Nor navigate the stars

Sometimes

Paranoia drives me

Underground

Into cellars

Pungent with decay

That I might

Entertain my vices

Unobstructed

4

Emancipated

By confession

I compose

These words

In the residue

Of an instinctive

Retreat

Shamelessly

Esoteric

I speak

Only that

I might be

Relieved

*

I was just contemplating certain aspects of human nature, I used the pronoun “I” broadly though I am guilty of being egocentric at times as well