Tag: death

Death, God, and Coffee

There in the corner

My stack of journals

And notes

Is the bourbon

The perfect line I just wrote

—-

I wonder if you will ever understand

You wonder if I could ever hold you

Like I hold words

—-

How do you separate

All of the salt from the sea?

How do you separate our two hearts

From the beats

——

And wake up alone

In the heat of the night

Out of the darkness

I talk to Death and to God

We drink our coffee

And write notes

But it’s nothing to see

Death is too tired anymore

And God is just a war vet with a broke heart used to the pain …

——

And I’m doing time in these mountains

Afraid I’ll never be happy

Wondering what’s left of me?

Is there anything left to see?

The lives we lived

All I know is how to be me
I know what I want
I know where I am going
I’m going forwards
——
I remember the night the tornadoes wrecked our home towns
I remember the night my dad died
I remember
Sitting in my car and making myself walk in the funeral home to look at my best friend who had died three days before …
I remember my grandmother dying from cancer and telling me about WWll
And my grandfather dying from heart ache after she passed
——
I’ve noticed everyone is into self help and therapy
And that’s great
——
But don’t forget to live
We are are promised nothing
You have to live -well, no you don’t…
But if you hope to at some future point
When things are better
When life is easier
After your healing
After the storm
After the divorce
Stop
Start today
Time is all we have and it’s Always running …

Keep your courage
Keep your strength
And face it

Live

The moon Queen

They say, she left her heart open, in the rain…

Every Tuesday

She would pick her flowers

And write her songs

No one knows much about her

What she really thought

How she felt about things

They only remember her sadness and her tragedy

I like to think

I know what she felt,

Some nights

At 3am

I can hear her playing the piano

Its music fills the halls upstairs

Some nights

When the moon is full

And melancholy

You can see her window open

Her wide, deep, dark eyes

And her blue dress

Sometimes it’s white

But she’s only there for a minute

And then she’s gone

You might see her at the top of the stairs

Or entering someone’s room

Trying to find something she’s left behind

I’ve seen some of her paintings

Some of her sketches

And heard her songs

I think I know what it must have felt like

To be filled so full

And not know

How to express it

To feel so alone

Like an outsider

Maybe she’s still trying to work it out….

They say

You feel the fear

And the terror

If you see her face though

The pain of dying

The air turns cold

I don’t believe it

I think you see the emptiness inside of yourself

No one knows what really happened to her

Her letters

Still show up under my door

That’s when I find her paintings

Inside empty rooms

Sometimes they’re in the park

I’ve seen her walking

When the moon is full

And the fog is down,

I don’t know why she talks to me

Maybe it’s because we are both alone

Filled with things to say

And unsure of how to say them

Maybe it never goes away

Maybe it doesn’t ever let go,

Maybe we just keep on trying

Even after we’re gone….

I don’t know her name

I only call her the moon queen….

Father

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It’s been two years
Since my father died
Just this month …

You don’t think about
Time passing
About growing up
Or about how everything
Is different now
You don’t think about him
Whenever old men
Harass young women
And you take them outside
And get in their face
You don’t
Think about all the driving lessons
When you almost wrecked your car
Or how you finally
Learned how to write
Without being angry
You don’t think
Everything just levels
And time moves
And you really start to live
Understanding that
We all are flawed

Millennial

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photo origin
1
Your favourite thing
Was words;
Lucid,
Opaque,
Provocateur,
Provocatrix,
Lurid,
Woman.
2
You always told me
To tear down
My walls…
But I wasn’t
Really listening
(It’s hard to hear
When you’ve got it figured out)

Loss changes us ….
It’s vivid …
The brevity of time
Can be seen
Frail and flawed
3
I’m just a millennial
I assumed we …
Would live forever
Or at least until
The world ends
But for
All I “knew”
And all I was “entitled to”
I didn’t know
About time …
About a pill in a bottle
A bullet in a gun
Or a chemical reaction
Called epilepsy
These things had never
Had anyone’s name on them…

Loss Changes us…
And now
I have a lot of words
I didn’t get to use.

But I finally wrote this one down
I took down my walls
And I started to live…

Bullet

Hard sole against the rail
The night air cold through the trees
Smokers in the back ground
Laughing
In the park sharing drinks

The train, a black mass of heated machinery closes in
And I think …
‘Hail satan
It’s the closest thing to a god
Man has probably ever made’
And step out

I feel the air move against me
As time slows against the racing of my heart

I don’t see hippy holes
Or Friday night lights
I don’t have any regrets

I see
What I’ve always seen
What I couldn’t escape
I see
49 acres of woods
That I ran through growing up

I see a peach hanging perfectly
In an orchard somewhere in Georgia

I see the shores of Normandy
I see presidents dying
I see a race to the moon

I see a hospital
With a patient screaming
a family crying outside my door
I hear a man coughing
His bed banging against the wall
His lungs fighting against the fluid

I see a bridge
A book
And water

I hear
a train moving
I see blackness
I feel cold

Into oblivion

Some teenagers asked
Me what you were like today…
they are too young
They don’t remember a world
Before this
It shocked me
And then I realized how many years have passed …
And so here I am
An adult now
Finally ready
I can tell my story

9/11
You were the day
September
Became more than
Just a birthday
I looked at the sky
With fear
The world as I knew it….
changed
the day
A city called New York
Felt like it was
Somehow
In my back yard
And I memorized it’s skyline
It’s buildings
It’s streets

the month,no.
The year
I had nightmares
Of paper towns
And iron cities
With white washed faces….
You were the year
I memorized the quote
On the Statue of Liberty
And
“Conspiracy theories”
Had faces and definitions
I will never see
“the potato chip”
The same

you became
The second date I
Mark on the calendar
Next to my birthday
And every Year
I grow heavy
I sleep less
I see shadows of people
And hear veterans crying

It’s difficult
For me
To remember
Anything else
All I know
Is what you gave us

But
I remember When – everything
All the paths
plans
roads
skies
seas
The past and
The present
Under
The shadow of planes
With the echo
Of collapsing …
Changed.

With faces hollowed out
Wearing our city
We rose
Forever changed
I remember
That.
Forever.

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27

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An empty room
a note on the table
Sylvia Plath,
And
Vizzini wrote about depression
about overcoming it
Only to commit suicide later…
Hemingway,shot himself …
Fitzgerald died from a heart attack
But depressed
Believing none of his work meant anything…

For writers
Depression seems to be a shadow
One that we can’t escape

That’s what I thought of …
Being the oldest sister
It shouldn’t have surprised me
Eric had always
Been very active
And from your first impression
He seemed to be fine
He’d gone to Africa after college
To work on journalism
And well drilling
Then moved to New York
I have three of his four books
Mostly poetry…
Some essays
A die hard romantic
And lover of children
And families
But he always had this
Shadow
I remember one night
He kicked back three drinks and some liquor got in his car
And disappeared for four days
Refusing to answer his phone
Or messages
I was about to call a close friend of his
To see if she’d heard anything from him
He never disappeared like this
It was more common of his
Brother
Disappearing
Smoking pot
Showing up once a decade
in Some random ER
But not Eric
Eric would be the one who stayed
With you in the ER

I finally received a text message
From him …
He just needed space
He’d said
“don’t worry I’m too vain to kill myself”
I couldn’t believe it
“That’s the ones who do …dumbass”
I answered angry
And then because I hate confrontation
I Tossed the phone in my top drawer
And waited
He didn’t say anything

He was the most personal person
You’d ever meet
Always wearing his heart on his sleeve
Unashamed
But there was a confusion
Even when he was younger
He wanted to connect to people
wanted to help them
But also loved his own space
Not isolating
So much
But keeping to himself
His only friends
Were women Mostly
He understood
Them
And fell for them
Over and over
And they fell for him
A photographer
With a heavy British accent
She knew him more than anyone
A screen writer who wrote him regularly
While she was away
And several others…
They all shared something

I remember he used to preach
When he was younger
And after our father died
He just stopped
He didn’t care a whole lot for religion
Or church
Everything was so charged
Everyone had an opinion
But he wasn’t like that
He just kept them to himself
Rather
He tried to understand people
And until they gave him a reason
An absolute reason not to
He gave them a chance

I was
Sitting in my window
Smoking
When I got the phone call
I knew …
And my heart sank
Into my chest

The night before his
27th birthday
Eric committed suicide
I went to his apartment
Sharon was there
The photographer
Reading old letters
He’d always typed out letters
And mailed them to everyone he knew
A reason wasn’t required
All he needed was to be thinking of you
And you’d get a letter …
She had 8 years worth …
So did several others ….
I realized
Then
That’s why he didn’t keep a journal
His journals were just fragments
But his letters were full…
He poured himself out
Hoping to help someone else

I looked outside
It was snowing …
In September
He would have loved that.

For writers
Depression seems to be a shadow
One that we can’t escape
It follows us through history
And we never see
I can’t begin to explain it
I can’t even write it
I’m just a writer
And the sister of
A writer…
Who knows it all too well.
We can carry our shadows
And cover them
We can project them
Or we can try
We can understand
Maybe we can write
Words
That haven’t been said before
And that’s difficult
Because everyone is saying
Something
But if we
Can make that connection
Boldly honest
Maybe it will help
Maybe …
Our shadows
Will make friends
With our demons
Maybe we will make it
Past 27.

Mirror Mirror

Maybe we all
At some point
Get to look into
Our future selves
And know…
The pain in our gut
Isn’t always illness
And
Though it may be strong,
Trucking through
Grounded
With sense and reason.
We understand
Paper skin
And heavy bones
Need
To
Dissolve
Imperfections
And shattered resolutions
Into the nape of a neck
With chapped lips
And open arms…
We need close
We need real.

Maybe,
There…
We are familiar with
The definition
Of other words…
Not just
‘Suicide’
‘Unfinished’
And
‘Malignant’

I hope there
We have the courage
To say
‘We are not…
Party lines
religions
Or
World citizens
To be
Corrected
understood
Paraphrased
defined
and
limited.
We are men
We are women.’

Maybe there,
Looking in
It’s not so distorted.

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