Tag Archives: poetry

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mermaid

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: quest.

mermaid

when I was born, they took my skin

i had no skin
i was frightened
i wept

a witch came
she studied me
i turned my head from the spoon

“Good,” she said, “You may refuse it if you want.”

She gave me the gift of anger

it was the only defense I had

but over the years
I studied and thought
and I found my tears
and I found my fears

i made my skin of tears
this took me many years
one tear for each scale

at last it is done
my skin
is complete

i smile at the sky
as i don it

i slip into the water
and i am gone

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And she’s walking as if her feet hurt

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: crepitus.

I wrote this poem thinking about my sister in 2009. I was writing on everything2.com and they had a “masked poetry ball”. We put up a second identity and part of the contest was guessing who was who. My brother in law and my sister had been on the site for far longer than me. While I was masked, my brother in law sent me a message that the poem reminded him of his wife. Yes, I thought, that poem worked, because I wrote it about her.

And she’s walking as if her feet hurt

And she’s walking as if her feet hurt
Each first metatarsal hits the dirt
Each joint feels like it’s full of grit
Bone on bone and all that shit

And she’s walking as if her feet hurt
Each first metatarsal hits the dirt
It’s no surprise, in fact it grates
To know she carries all those weights

Please rest your feet sometimes my dears
Those silly joints must last for years
One of the many dark deep fears
To walk in pain for years and years

And she’s walking as if her feet hurt
Each first metatarsal hits the dirt
I wish that she could go on home
And put her feet up all alone

I took the picture, of my sister and my son, in 1993 in Portland, Oregon. My sister injured her knee fighting fires when she was 22. Her knee worked after the surgery, but with crepitus within ten years. And her feet started to hurt.

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the virtue of the disconnect

the virtue of the disconnect
learnt early
as a child

they say we are broken
wired wrong
enduring horror

he wakes at night
sleeps lightly

what was your childhood like?
how did you sleep?

it was not safe
we had to get up
leave in the night
gunshots

you survived your childhood

yes, I did

sleeping lightly saved you

yes, it did

you could rewire that
it takes a lot of time
to change the childhood wiring

or you could just
be ok

with sleeping lightly

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memory’s vault

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: fumble.

Up near the bunker’s is Memory’s Vault. This is the first part of the poem A Lover’s Quarrel, about the longing for home. The poems are by Sam Hamill. It is a beautiful place.

I hope that no one fumbles with our hearts during the holidays and that we feel loved and home wherever we are….

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Does the world have a soul? Are we connected to it? If we don’t believe the world has a soul, are we disconnected?Β 

Michael Meade’s latest book is Awakening the Soul: A Deep Response to a Troubled World. He is a mythologist, author and runs Mosaic, a program for veterans. He is a storyteller, usually with a drum. He did the sermon… story… at church Sunday. I wrote this thinking about the soul of the world.

why I’m difficult

deep connection
the soul deep
ocean deep
rift and trench

Beloved
forgive my greed
that is the connection
I want

deep soul connection
to the soul of the world

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https://www.mosaicvoices.org/
https://www.quuf.org/
The story itself: https://www.quuf.org/services/awakening-the-light/

music by Purcell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67q18Z4QZlU

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blues too

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: brilliance. The brilliance of the sky reflecting in the water.

blues

blues, Beloved

I am so blue, Beloved
about the things I can’t heal
about the people I can’t heal
about the relationships I can’t heal

I take my own advice
and walk after clinic
and the beauty of your sky, Beloved
heals me
lifts me
sensory

I am with the trees
the sky
the dirt
the clouds
the water

water water water
blue in the evening light

we only see the surface
of the water
not what is underneath
it reflects the sky
the light
the clouds

people are like water

we only see the surface
and see ourselves reflected back

my office manager came from hotels

this is so much harder, she says

and I say yes
because we see the depths

this person is behaving badly
yelling on the phone
calling crying yelling

but we both know
how much they are suffering
how much they want help
how they won’t listen or accept help

they want what they want

these people are breaking down
in the holidays stressed

I just long for rest Beloved

blues

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doctor’s orders

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: recommend.

doctor’s orders

I recommend a daily walk

no earbuds
no headphones

listen to the wind
to the trees
to the birds
to the traffic
to the city
or the country

feel the ground
the pebbles
the sidewalk
the dirt
the grass
the wind
the sun
the rain
the cold
the crunch
of snow or ice

look at trees
weeds
birds
dogs
people
sidewalks
cracks
water
snow

smell cold
snow
rain
sun
sand
sidewalks
grass

taste the wind
a snowflake
a leaf
ice

touch the earth

and let the rest go

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deep

today goes deep

I let it

when someone says “You are too emotional.”

it means “I am not comfortable with your emotions.”

it is them not me
I could care less
what they think
what they feel
whether they are comfortable with my emotions
they will be on my shit list
until they learn

I am comfortable with my emotions

today goes deep

I let all the darkness rise
grief
anger
disillusionment
humiliation

and my small child

is wild
with joy

this day is yours
small child

I am with you today
all day
you I the Beloved

no shoulds today
no list
nothing that you do not want to do

food
music
warmth
church
beach walk

I will not clean
I will not pay bills
I will not sit with fools
who say I am too emotional

we can laugh
or cry
or rage

would you like to smash a plate?

no
says small child

food
warmth
outdoors
birds
deer
music of the spheres

here
dear one

we go deep

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off

every time I turn something off

I turn the television off in 2011
I turn Facebook off for a while
for days
I turn the computer off every morning
I turn the radio off
the stereo off
the lights off
the heat off

I sit

I listen to the wind
the birds
the sounds

I feel the wind
the rain
the ice
the sun

I touch
the earth

she is present
alert
awake
listening

she touches me back

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The chances of a poet reaching us are slim

I wrote this after working at Madigan Army Hospital in 2009 for three months as a temporary doctor. I am posting it here because Shoreacres sent me this link about poetry and medicine.

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I would pray if I could. It seems ludicrous to pray for a poet, but there it is.

It started with two soldiers. The Army was embedding a behavioral health specialists (the new politically correct term for mental health specialists) in units starting before 2010. Soldiers were trained in suicide prevention, instructed to stay with a buddy if they made any comments about suicide. A soldier was to walk his or her buddy directly to the behavioral health specialist or to to higher rank. As soldiers went on their fourth and fifth tours, post traumatic stress disorder, depression and traumatic brain injuries were rampant. Unfortunately, psychologists basically felt like they were putting Power Ranger band-aids on hemorrhaging brain arteries. It wasn’t working.

A soldier was accompanying a convoy in Iraq when an IED went off. Right through the bottom of a convoy truck. The driver died screaming from an arterial groin bleed. Two of the eight soldiers were killed. The truck was abandoned and the rest of the convoy got back to the safe (mostly) zone. That soldier had the glassed ghost look in her eyes and got quiet. The usual response was to avoid someone’s eyes and hope for the best, but another soldier wouldn’t let her alone. She kept asking, “Tell me. What happened?”

The first soldier finally snarled out part of the story.

The second soldier pinned a poem to her pillow, describing the event. Our first soldier came in screaming and threw the crumpled ball of paper at her chest. “That’s not what happened! That’s not how I felt! Not even close!”

“Well, what DID happen!” The rest of the unit tried to hide in plain sight or disappeared to the bathroom or got really interested in books or watching the same video over and over, but the two of them stood face to face and went at it. Words, not fists. The crumpled paper was retrieved, the poem rewritten. It took two weeks before soldier one suddenly said, “That’s it. That’s pretty good. For a poem.” But she was back, her gruff foul mouthed efficient self.

Of course it wouldn’t have gone anywhere if the behavioral health specialist hadn’t joked about it to his superiors. The Army was really desperate. In spite of all the work, the suicide rate was still challenging the combat death rate, and there just weren’t enough people to deploy.

The Army went looking for poets. Four were promptly deployed into units. Two of them turned out to be pretty useless, but the other two: the units thrived. Word started getting around. The poets were swamped with people from other units.

The recruiting campaign: “We want you, yes we do, poet show your heart so true!” was painful, but the Army did not care. And poets stepped forward from within the ranks! Don’t ask, don’t tell turned on it’s head. In spite of the medical community’s cries for waiting until more scientific studies were done, and the press and cartoonists drawing pictures recruiters welcoming wimpy pale asthenic writers with open arms, the Army embedded a poet in every unit, right beside the behavioral health specialist. Oh, of course they tried prose too. The academics had a field day fighting about why prose didn’t work. But it didn’t.

It’s the height of irony that we’re cut off with everything we need, except a poet. A water source, food, ammunition. We’re holding our position. Our back up poet is dead ten days ago, but our main poet got an IED blast. Traumatic brain injury, two weeks ago. We can’t get him out, of course. You would think someone would bleed if they were that bad, but he just can’t hold on to any memory. The soldiers tell him their stories, he struggles and tries, but he can barely hold on to one line. Can’t read, though he can write. Can’t see very well either.

The whole unit is starting to look glass-eyed and haunted. Smith asked to go in the jail yesterday and for the door to be closed. He promptly started screaming. It got quiet after a while so they went in. He was sitting on bunk. “Ok.” he said. “I might come back tomorrow.” Some soldiers are writing their own limericks or free verse. It’s ironic that it hurts morale so much, knowing there’s help available. Knowing the chances of a poet reaching us in time are very slim.

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I will use this for the Ragtag Daily Prompt: comeback.