Tag: letters

2020 #17

My dear,

My darling,

I’ve been carrying this weight…this image…of a future.

I always

Have a flare up when I feel something like this move through me…

Bobby Kennedy was assassinated on this June day 1968

I think it’s like James Baldwin said…

We easily forget how young everyone was then…

He met with Lorraine Hansberry and Baldwin in 1963

Author of raisin in the sun

Kennedy was only 38.

Lorraine would of course die at the age of 34… and Kennedy would be assassinated just 5 years later at the age of 43.

The Kennedys were appalled at the living conditions of black Americans. They were young and changing their minds about things. But like James said, this was the cost of segregation, it was a Great Wall between us. You never REALLY got to know eachother.

And you didn’t feel that you had a place set for you at the table for the American dream. You were an opportunity a pawn but you were not really represented. If you rose up and talked like white men you were dangerous.

A friend of mine wrote me and reflected that same emotion. That she always pretended we were the same but she’s afraid we are really not.

It’s not a race issue

It’s an apathy issue

A distance

We don’t want to know or see or hear.

We want the horrors to stay over there.

We are all brothers and sisters

Lovers

But we are so comfortable I don’t know that we would even be moved anymore…

Maybe we really do struggle with a mental fear, while black Americans live in the reality. The reality that these horrors are daily events and just a step away.

Bobby believed

And he changed his mind

He moved in those directions.

Darling,

I’m going to be 31 this year

I’m thinking about the youthfulness of these people…

I’m thinking about their ability to hold ideas

I’m thinking about all of the people and the youth we have already lost…

I’m believing we have hope

This is home to all of us

And this is America

Hang in there.

We must face ourselves.

So we can love eternal.

Yesterday

Hold those thoughts

That keep me away

While the lights

Echo my lonely fears

In the streets tonight

——-

They say the world

Keeps changing everyday

But I wake in the night

I feel the same

——-

Maybe we’re so much older

Maybe we’re so much younger

Maybe we’ve been here before

Pour me a drink

Don’t let me go

——

The summer is coming

These clouds won’t stay so grey

We can’t live out our hopes and dreams inside yesterday’s

Dear you

Dear you

Take a moment

To celebrate your wins

You’ve made it this far

Be proud of yourself

And your success

The goals you’ve crushed

This is your life…

You’re living it

Right here, in the now

And if you’re wondering

You’ve been heard

You’re not alone

Your feeling are valid

Even the earth is overwhelmed

at times

And drops a storm for 72 hours

Flooding

Just to wipe the slate clean

And start again

You’re not alone

Even stars burn out

They have to die

To be born again

These do not quietly fade away

The do not sit alone in the dark night

They must be heard

They must be seen

They shake the heavens

With a supernova

Giving birth to other stars

You

You matter

You have more atoms in your eye

Than all the stars in the known universe ….

Maybe this is why we feel so young

Maybe this is why

We feel so old ….

We’ve been here before

But this love

This life

This heart

The fire in your eyes

Has burned with the sun

You matter

This is what legacy’s are made of

These victories

I want to celebrate with you

I want to guard your dreams

Dear you

Keep moving forward

That’s how progress is made

Three steps forward

Two back

Overall

Progress

Bleeding ink #1,368

The sky is white

But you can taste the darkness inside

This hollow

This void

These eyes have been empty for sometime ——

These weapons

These sharp objects

Too too many

That we hide behind —-

Let this go

This hurt

Let this go

This pain

Let this go

Gently ——

Like the leaves

With their colours

The trees

Lose their leaves

The ocean with it’s tide

It always comes back in

The sunrise

Gives way for the

sunset

The moon

For the sunrise

We have to let go of things gently ——

We are meant to walk together

To love

But go boldly

Go strongly

And let go

Of things gently

So they can come back to you

30 for 30 (She’s going to make me lonesome when she goes)

October 1st

She smokes her cigaret

Stares out the dirty windows

Waiting for someone to come in

She feels paranoid

But when they do come in

She sits with them

Pours them a cup of tea

Makes sarcastic remarks

She gives them books to read

A trail of smoke follows her every where she goes

Her red hair is pulled up under a bandana

Her green eyes carry an age to them …

November 15th

Everyone that comes in leaves

With a story

For the last five years

It’s been me

We all want something

We want to be something

We believe we are making a mark

She has so many opinions

And ideas

She plays the piano

And thinks it’s funny

It being in a library

Dec 12th

I believe she is a muse

Not in the way we use it now

But in the, what is it? The original way

Muses were something that came to an artist

And helped them make art

Dec 24th

I don’t think she knows…

Jan 13th

She’s clouded

And heavy

Maybe she has been around for too long

Or for such a long time

She has forgotten

She is unhappy

Smokes more

Drinks more

Sleeps all day

Doesn’t get up

Or come sit with me like she used to

She just lets me use the library

I cannot write like I used to

I’ve asked her to go away with me

I think she is going away

But alone

she doesn’t laugh

She won’t drink tea anymore

The sunlight doesn’t come in the windows anymore

She’s going to make me lonesome when she goes…

Sept 20th

It’s been a long time since I’ve last written.

But I think I’ve carved out a way.

To just sit and work…

October 31st

I thought I saw her today

In a bookstore

It was just a moment

A flash of red

But

She looked happy .

Who knows what a muse is?

But maybe

Just maybe

They help us find our way

And our voice…

Who is to say anything is really gone?

Maybe they are there

In ordinary places

Doing ordinary things.

waiting for us to be unexpected

And

extraordinary.

Simple Things

She dreams of little things

As she steps over the cracks in the street

And the whole wide world it seems

Is on the edge of a break down

This wet blanket of time

This overcast sky

It’s rotating now

I always whispered into the dark

It’s simple things

You take away with you

The notes on the napkin

The perfect slice of pie

And

There are certain shadows

That you just carry with you

As you go

The old man in line at the drug store

Remembers the Kennedy’s

I remember 9/11

Someone asked me what it was like

And I just looked at them

And I was sad

Because they don’t remember

The world before – the heaviness of now

MMBOP

Surge
The original animated Batman from the 90’s

But now that I’m older I think a lot about that man in line at the drug store

And I realized everyday for him must be heavy as well

And those who lived through Nixon

Or the man who told me about D-Day …

Being a teenager

The pain in his eyes

Asking me how you’re supposed to come back from that

And I remember the pain in peoples eyes after the Tornados …

We all carry darkness

And we all live in this same room

We just see it from different corners

Lit by the same light

Different points of view….

Carry the simple things

Take them with you

It’s ok to believe again

Like you once did

Create again

A little at a time

This is an old pain

Older than time

And even the stars are quilted with shadows

It just takes courage

Just one step at a time

That’s how the light is made

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….

Ashes

The piano was more difficult to play now, certain chords would go missing….

The same with photographs. Some faces were familiar…others were blackened with ash and she didn’t know them…

Some days she felt like everything was good. She really had a hold on things.

Other days, she would be given a journal

And expected to write…

But the pages were burning

The words were missing…

The safest place was the window on those days.

To just sit and look outside….

She could remember some things…

But it was all the new faces that frightened her.

The new town….

Other days she would work on her next detective novel…

But she always felt, trapped,inside a burning house

And couldn’t shake the feeling,time was running out.

But then, she had felt like this since her early twenties.

Now she was…she was…

Letters to a Nurse #20

All of her hair, it’s always been red and her lips, they’ve always been red. Her temper, her passion, has always been red. Her fists have always been made.

And I’m lost, when she lets her hair down. When our eyes meet, it feels just like coming home. Touch for touch, a new star being born,

Meet me in the night, morning comes too early, we haven’t got time to wait, we can walk through the fire, I feel like I’m forgetting parts of you my lips need to touch.

Will another year pass? How many hours are in a day? Everything burns blue when she is away…and it rains every day.

Everything in this house burns red when she is near.

-regardingsamuel.com

Letters to a Nurse #18

maybe the past has a way of reminding us

We’re not that far from who we used to be

I just wanted to say

Thank you for loving me

You’re a good nurse

A good friend

And when I’m with you

I feel so lucky

And when I’m not with you

I miss you…

I miss you…

The bed is empty without you here

Champagne can only do so much

I miss talking with you

Someone should really

Tell the others

What marriage is really like

How you have to grow

The unspoken rules

What you find yourself carrying

And how we change

no one else will do

Not a soul in a room

There’s only you…