The Sounds of Trouble and Sadness

Heartbroken.
She is probably abused at home,
Her children too,
And so she watches silently, passive,
In that way.
As the child commands her in word, action, inaction.
He is old enough to know.
Young enough not to.
We work through it together,
Giving when we can give,
Letting go when we cannot,
And we care for the child.
He remains defiant, though with me unsure,
He giggles as he defies, and I work with it.
In the end we are done, we all win.
I leave, faith that I have done well by them.
But then he refuses, curls into a ball, and feigns sleep,
Time goes by, and by, and by again,
She stands forlorn, saying nothing, doing nothing, tired.
The nurse sees them lingering, and tells the boy its time to go,
"I will carry you...", mom begs softly.
Nothing changes, he does not relent.
Time passes by, and by, and by again.
I wonder, and venture, and find him smiling asleep,
Lean in, whisper "Its time to go." He ignores.
I stroke his cheek and cajole with a determination he understands,
"You will listen to your mother because she loves you,
You will listen to me because I do too.
Its time to go. Sit up and walk.
Your mother cannot carry you.
She has carried you far too far already...".
I am, I think, her champion, her friend.
He slyly smiles, sits up, then slides towards the floor,
She catches him but he is too big.
Maybe all men leave her, I leave her, and it must injure.
Time again goes by, and by, and by again,
Mom suddenly charges out half carrying him,
He is a heavy, heavy, burden she must carry,
All hate and spittle, invective forth,
Coming apart down to her soul.
"How dare you, it is not your place!"
I abjure, seeing the pain but lost,
And she screams a circle of anger, hate and powerlessness, shame.
"I did what someone had to do, it was my place, perhaps not my time..."
But words she cannot hear, too far gone into her despair.
Time passes by, and by, and by again,
But she is relentless, and relentless still.
Suddenly she and they are gone in shocking silence.
Time goes by, and by, and by again.
Our day is done, we leave.
She awaits outside for me, and screams again,
Relentless and unrelenting.
Burning me in her hell,
follows me in her car, her words unrecognized.
Their pain cannot miss,
Her heartbreak pounds me,
And my heart cracks, knowing that it is not me she hates,
But me who will need to endure.
In this moment
She hates everything and I am here where everything is not,
And so she burns me,
And she will burn me again, and again,
Because I remind her that she is less than,
Though I know
She is not.
She has broken my heart,
For breaking hers...
And this
I must endure...
Fingers will point,
And words will refrain,
"How dare you! It was not your place!"
And I will endure,
Heartbroken.

On Being Human

There was the thought that something was amiss. In all of these years of struggle, they hadn’t really stopped to think, really, about what the struggle was to accomplish. They felt the angst of their turmoils, but denied feeling connected to any of it. It was as if all of this was somehow imagined, a product of someone else’s psyche, and that they were just living in it.

It hurts, when you do think about it, to know that all of this wasn’t really for anything at all. It just was. There was no purpose, just moving through a day together to the next. Waffling about in a sea of emotions and peculiarities that didn’t attach itself to anything real. Surely, there was context, surely the context wanted to move something, change something, but it was their insight that had limited their ability to succeed. They acutely lacked any.

These issues felt wrong, felt in need of a champion, seemed worth standing up for, taking a blow for. But in the end, if things changed at all, they changed in small increments, and sometimes would be later washed all away. A lot seemed to be intuitive; who would not want what is best for someone else? Curiously, a lot of people. A lot of powerful people, they need to control others for any number of reasons. it didn’t have to have a purpose either, this oppression, often frightening out of proportionally angry oppression. If there was a psyche involved, it was deeply scarred and took pleasure, purpose, in laying others out. Religion, money, power from others, all have been used to to control others for no other reason than to control others.

Silver spoon not so ironically in mouth, they feared someone who needed something terribly, might get it for nothing. The angst came from our wondering why this might bother anyone for any reason at all? What broiled within them that made them need to stand on another’s neck, whoever that someone might be, but no more vociferously so than for a person unlike them, in color, race, or thought. What sin was there, what moral code broken, in lifting someone up for no other reason than one should and could? What frightened them so much that they ran from fear to fear giving them all a common cause, that someone, somewhere, might rise above with the help of others? 

Impenetrable, this psyche. Reason through compassion cannot make way, for if it did, the entire house of cards would come crashing down, their entire reason d’être challenged and inward looking would bring catastrophe to the fragile psyche. Let it go. Let it go. Let go of the need to protect your ego, your position, and be human, be humane.

The struggle was purposeless, it seemed, mostly because those who care had no power over those who did not. Fear always wins using ways that have nothing to do with ending it, but rather oddly, using those that perpetuate it. Fear wins because there is nothing that it won’t do to perpetuate itself. Fear is unbridled power. Racketeering on a human race scale; create the fear, then create more to substantiate it, and use that fear to create barriers to allowing those fears to reach you all the while buttressing up those fears. That’s no way to get through life. And therein lies the struggle’s failure. There was no way in through those bigoted layers. Throwing ourselves against these walls accomplished nothing. You cannot reason with those fearful of imaginary things, or they would not exist at all in the first place.

Ayn Rand wrote of the distinguished elite hiding themselves away from the ungrateful masses, to punish them through absence and abstinence. Perhaps we should write of the masses leaving the ungrateful elite behind, and letting them fend for themselves? Let them go. Let them create their own bastions of fear, and brood within. We will instead go on living in a place where we all belong. All we all want is to feel safe and to belong where we are, to be moved and welcomed within our own skin, our own lives. Lets make that happen. Be reasonable. There is no place without pain, fear or annoyance, but learn to deal with life, let the snowflakes around you melt, be stoic and reasoning, and take no offense where there is no malice, being sure not to mistake ignorance for malice. No one owes us anything, and yet, we all owe each other everything. We owe each other humane compassion? Not even that; nothing is owed, all is freely given.

Be kind, be compassionate, give, lift others up for no other reason than they need a hand, give everyone a safe place where they belong. Demand nothing, just make it be. Stop crying over insult, stop with the trigger warning/safe space entitlement, and instead listen, learn keep and discard, and just be. This doesn’t mean we should allow travesty, but that instead we should avoid it. Stop struggling; we will never change them, never drill through the layers of fear and willful ignorance. Ask for what you need, give to those who need it, require nothing in return. Just be human in the best way that we can be.

Chapter 1 Fido

The end of fall was heralded by the unexpected frost, a cold wind coming down from the north, a gift of the Canadians to their black sheep cousins to the south. As it is wont to do each fall, the brisk winds clear the deciduous forests, opening vistas and covering trails, making clean and fresh what had become pale and brown. Winter isn’t harsh if you stay inside, but to the denizens of the doorways and streets of Manchester, harsh is exactly what winter is. Winter is something to fear, to dread with shaking bones, an anxiety that did not go from night to night, day to day, but for weeks on end.

Emily, who had never really experienced snow let alone a real winter, had marveled at the hail that fell so thick, only to be chuckled at for the small snow squall and its sleety snow that had come through for the briefest of moments. She would later lament the long darkness that was a winter’s day in New Hampshire, and feel the burden of the seasonal depression that was its shroud. She would learn she liked the idea of snow, but not snow, not the snow that came early and beautiful, and left late and blackened, that made for “9 months of winter, and 3 months of damn poor sledding”.

She had come for the art school, but in the spring of her first year, her father had been fired from a job he never liked, by people he liked even less, and there really was no way for her to make ends meet without mortgaging her soul for a future that would never earn it back. She was too young to sell her future, there being no equity in it. So she left school, and having no where else to go, stayed in Manchester, taking her part time job as a crusher of coffee beans at Starbucks, and turning it into a full time job as a packer of pills at PillPack. She still couldn’t afford the rent, nor could her roommates, but together they could manage as long as none of them slipped up.  Nothing special, a walk up over Cesario’s, but it was an easy walk down Spring Street over to the Waumbec Mill building on the edge of the Merrimack River where PillPack stuffed peoples lives into little heat sealed plastic bags.

Emily had met Sarah and her girl friend Jennifer two summers ago when she had first come to the New Hampshire Institute of Art. They had lived in the same college dorm in the YMCA, and that first spring they took an apartment together over the pizza shop on Elm Street, pretty much just across the street. The two lovers took one room, and Emily got the other. No one was ever there, between work and school, so it worked. The place always smelled of Cesario’s Pizza, which was a mainstay of their diet. It was like their cat, Fido, had a place of his own and they just slept there.

Fido. What a life. They left a window out back cracked open enough for him to make his way out, and using his cat wiles he easily made it to street level to make his rounds. The heat always seemed to be on hellfire, no matter what they did with the thermostat, so keeping the window open might have been to vent the heat, but still, a path is a path between his two worlds. In, out, it was all up to him and his cat mood. He tended to hit the street early in the morning when it was dry. Fido doesn’t do wet. But he does do snickey’s, so he makes his way down one side of Elm Street and at some point turns around and comes back up the other. There is always someone who tosses him a bit of somethin’-somethin’, and by the time he made it back to the apartment he had had breakfast. Well, first breakfast, because in the apartment there was his bowl of dry, and once a day, a plate of some yummy wet food. Yeah, he does that kinda wet. Food was never an issue. Home is where the fresh water and wet food are. And where Emily is.

Toxic

The dangerous are not the bombast
but the whisperer,
the cunning clever one
who plays invisibly
and kills
ineffably.

You belong wherever you are...

Really all anyone wants is to belong.
To be where they are and feel safe.
Know that if a moment arises they are among friends.
To be loved and cared for
despite themselves.
Thats all, just to belong.
Why is it so hard to just bring people in
and let them be?
Where do the toxic people come from?
Why do some have to be so hurtful,
finding some power in keeping another down?
They feel unloved, uncertain of their place in the world,
so they fight to belong,
drowning others that might take their place.
They are not the bombast, but the silent predator.
Be that heart that opens
to bring in the sad, the lost, the happy and proud,
and give them your place at the table.
You will not lose your place
but instead beholden others to your keeping it.
All anyone needs really,
is to be loved.

Loneliness

The light shone into the deepest corners of the room,
Yet the darkness remained, unabated.
Peace, he heard, came at a price.
The evil he feared was not what he needed saving from,
The words rumbled through him uncertain
And he found no solace there.
There is no peace in dying,
Only more suffering.
There is no end to this.

The Follower

If it is your place to lead, lead. If it is your place to follow, follow. Do not follow blindly, but follow nonetheless. If the follower leads, the path is a circle unto itself. What purpose is there in that other than to stay lost? Be not presumptuous about your place. It is your place and it does not make you less than. But should you forget your place, cry not for being culled down, for that too, is your place. Suffer with humility and learn to follow well. Great leaders are first great followers. An army is not built on the shoulders of leaders but on the backs of followers. Follow well, and the day is yours. Follow well, and you will lead well, when your time is come.