I was feeling a bit dark back towards the end of October when I wrote this.
Dark poetry for a Black Moon:My first memory
as a child of less than three,
is the sound of my mother crying.
Sitting on her lap,
hearing that awful wailing,
wicked nails cutting deep into doughy white arms,
as I watched the paramedics slide my father's body
into the coroner's wagon.
On a bad day I can still hear that terrible howl.
I've had Bonnie Raitt's "Angel from Montgomery" on repeat all day.
But it doesn't help.
I was 7 the first time I caught a bloody nose from a grown man
and 15 when I left my mother's house for the first time.
I remember being hungry.
I remember potatoes -
a hundred ways to cook a potato -
and being hungry.
Outside of a crushing depression -
not much more.
There was a beautiful girl
whose mother cared for me
and welcomed me to her table.
She fed me well and loved me simply.
That made a difference.
But never enough to make up for all the rest.
What I wouldn't give to be back at her table again.
When I was 21 I fought 6 skinheads out in the street
and sent one boy to the hospital.
It was hardly enough to ease my burden.
I just bruised my knuckles and walked away
exactly the same as before.
All this life is a trade -
everything you've owned and worked for,
for something you might never get
might never even see.
If I offered you your last breath
for 10 years of hard labor -
I wonder if you’d take it?
I made the deal -
and walked away
just the same as before.
Some days I feel myself flying thru the air once more
and I can't tell
if it's just me falling
or me throwing myself into that fight again.
Some days I want to be that wild damned animal
going after them boys without a second thought for myself -
what ol' Chief Broom called "that wild animal cry of the cornered and the dying that doesn't even care for itself no more”
just to feel something.
It's not the fear of the end that makes them howl -
it's always the what comes after that follows 'em in
and forever.
Now that I'm an old man
with an old dog nearly asleep on the floor -
one eye nearly closed -
I wonder if there's a point to it all.
I've lovers that used to love me
and friends I don't talk to
brothers I don't speak to
and an empty space near my heart.
I made my peace -
I wrote my will -
I signed the DNR -
left my things to 2 little boys that are now young men
and yet still here I am.
It's the hardest of things
to go your own way
to make your path -
All in your time
And mine as well.
