This Pilgrim's Digression
- ten poems in transit
(A journey toward home)
Homecoming
Reluctantly,
the splintered old door
swings slowly open
and musty dusty smells greet me.
The floor boards creak,
moaning with cold hollow
mournful empty echoes
punctuated by the whistling wind
as it cuts though broken windows.
An old cracked butter dish,
(Depression glass,
once hurled across the room)
now sits precariously
on the edge of a coffee stained kitchen table
both ready to fall into oblivion.
Roaming,
I walk from room to room
recollections emerge meekly
squeaking with every step.
Ghostly apparitions play in shadows:
with scoffs and scorns and contumelious taunts
dark specters deride my existence.
These phantom voices pierce the air
odious bellows of obloquy meant
to obliterate all objections.
sounding all too much like my father.
Alone,
in the center of this old house,
sits the weeping waiting child;
unloved and nearly forgotten,
shivering in the cold emptiness,
surrounded by tormenting fears.
A blank stare masks the dread,
afraid of being lost and alone,
the child fades in and out of focus
as a green sapling slowly fades
disappearing within the enveloping
Winter fog.
i am little
i am four or so, smallish;
learning to hide under tables,
the bed, small closets, in plain sight.
little things hold my attention,
carpet bugs crawling, chalk
on a swept clean sidewalk, the coal
chute in the basement, my fingers
wiggling in water, red breasted robins
that sing to me, alone.
i hate naps in the daylight,
being told “no,” wearing diapers,
thunder and lightning, the smell of my father,
yelling and shouting, my mother crying,
large dogs with white teeth, barking.
i like the kitchen in morning,
the way my mother smells,
her soft singing, squeezing margarine
until it turns yellow, being a big helper,
the dust dancing quietly in sunlight.
i realize, i am not like my father; not at all.
Mummy says
Mummy says i must eat my vegetables,
should clean my plate, there are
starving children in China – i suggest
feeding them and not me…maybe
they like cabbage better than i do.
Mummy says i must wear my socks,
should clean my room, brush my teeth,
go to school, not get beat up – i suggest
staying home instead…maybe then
no one would laugh at me, beat me up.
Mummy says i must learn to behave,
should not sass back, sit in a corner,
not use bad words – i suggest
no soap to wash my mouth…maybe that
was a bad idea, i get spanked till blisters rise.
Mummy says i must learn to get along,
not make waves, fit in with others,
try look like them – i suggest
i should wear what i want…maybe then
they would see me as i really am.
Mummy says, ‘wait till your father gets home.’
i am seven
i am seven
i have a thin body
it rides low in water
i nearly drown, twice,
thrown into the deep end.
i have hazel eyes,
see everything double,
in the mirror; miss nothing.
i have crooked teeth
they twist my smile,
which i do infrequently
mistaken for being angry;
it is shame of ugliness
that hides me.
i read large thick books,
find thin pressed flowers,
play with dolls, alone.
my orange cat is old, dies,
and i get a small green turtle
smelling of algae and fear.
i pray ‘now i lay me’ at night
to my mother’s god.
i dream of white castles,
knights, clean white sheets,
un-wet.
i am seven,
my awkward body
is not my own.
no one believes me,
so i learn to lie,
someone else’s truth.
I Am A Sinister Child
I am eight and we are called into the principal's office.
She says to my parents, that it is just not right at all,
It is against all natural law, recommending a specialist
Teachers tell my parents, I must be made to obey.
They make me sit in a backward desk.
They tie my left arm, twisting it behind my back.
I am bound and they are determined
To force me to behave “correctly.”
But I just sit, there, in my backward chair.
They just leave me, there, to stare off into space,
Leave me alone; leave me to tears,
Left, to consider my evil and sinister ways.
My teacher, sings;
“Don’t you want to be like other girls and boys?”
But I sit frozen and stay stone still.
I am let out at lunch to play with other children,
But they know, they know I am different.
They laugh at my arms, my hands, my face.
And they throw mud, throw dirt, at me.
The principal pins a note to my coat,
Pins it with a righteously pious pity.
When I get home my mother cries and when
My father gets home, he rages,
“Why can’t you behave and be normal
Like all the other children?”
So I am spanked, again, beaten soundly,
They send me to bed without supper
At night, I finally fall asleep and dream
Long deep dreams, of a world
Where no one has any hands.
i see things
The girl in the tintype
now brown with age
round with youthful wonder
frail within the thin light
stirring the past and the tuning
of a page she lingers there
an eternal smile
frozen in time, my dreams,
and a thousand questions of
was she ever loved?
This mirror speaks no falsehood
a moment captured, a truth
held motionless. I learn
to hate mirrors and my
father’s camera.
i learn to run
I learned to run at an early age,
not sure when, for sure, but remember always
running away from something, someone.
Fear, I suppose, started it – being hit,
beaten up, again, preservation of self.
I remember a race in fourth grade on grass
with white chalk lines and windblown trees,
where I outran all the sixth graders; I was nine.
I did not run in real races till I was fourteen,
learned to hold back, stay with the pack,
not be seen out in front, made sure I had friends.
I learned, by sixteen, I had no friends.
Adolescent betrayals that others seemed to weather,
to live through, eroded any confidence,
sense of safety, I had in my peers; so I ran.
I ran all that next summer,
morning and night, on the streets just before
dawn, on the beach just after sunset,
pounding rhythmic reveries into wet sand.
At seventeen, there were only a few who
could beat me. I learned being a long distance
runner translated into an aching loneliness
and wariness of heart, always looking
over my shoulder for fear of being caught,
and being beaten.
I have trouble sleeping
There was a tree just outside my window,
moaning and creaking all night long,
long boney fingers making a shadow,
rustle of leaves making a song.
When I cannot sleep I think of that tree,
sounds and the sights I used to fear,
they seem so minute compared to debris,
my life in chaos, so unclear.
It is shadow and song I now recall,
which holds me captive in the night,
figures dueling upon the wall,
the Self in battle with Ego and Light.
I try to learn to write
The realm of teachers is vast
For a student in the sixties
Who feels lost in his own skin,
Alienated from a society bent on war.
The agenda of The Left not evident
But most certainly resonating deep
Within the thirsting, searching mind,
Longing for any form of acceptance.
So words became more than swords of conscience,
Became emblems of meaning and purpose,
Held hope and dreams aloft as a beacon.
Writing those words, became my passion
Held in check by insecurity; shared only
Within the arena of tested, proven intimates.
There came a realization, slowly clarified,
My writing was clumsy, ugly, dull, lifeless,
A curse upon the senses, crashing helplessly,
As Icarus who dared dream to see god.
I recognized my need to learn to read,
and then to write.
I have a mongreled soul
A life lived
in parallel dwells so close
to the edge, the cliff,
the precipice,
the enticing limit of conventional thought;
stretching the divine, stretching
the idea of how a human should live,
breathe and have its being.
Two paths, one life.
Two lives one body.
A fantasy, both
fabricated by chance, chemicals,
the mind in its woven creation
beats down upon the tortured creature
who, in terror, exists - cannot discern
which is real, imagined,
or forced by shadowed egocentricity
A life lived so,
is not living at all;
the world shatters a soul
held thus, in this torment; to be set
on this quest and course of fire and the grave.
Begging a question;
does one’s life
merely mirror the body
or realms of angels and demons?
~r.
All rights reserved, © March15, 2007 R.G. Braley (astralshepherd)
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