You were a mess,
but I loved you.
I left,
but I loved you still.
You went through denial,
anger and shock,
bereavement,
acceptance of blame.
I loved you still,
just the same.
In your pain, I saw
how hard you were trying
to work your way through your loss,
to know yourself with more depth.
I was impressed.
Now that I see how you love me,
how could I love you less
the doctor is a robot
his chest is full of little drawers
where they replaced his heart
the day the sales rep glided in
and explained it all to him
he’s programmed with prescriptions
and has no finer thoughts
he looks as if he listens
but the clock is always ticking
and he’s built to silence talk
he’ll take you to a special place
you’ll feel no mental pain
(he never heard the saying,
so he’ll cut you off from gain).
he’ll disconnect your soul
and cast you into fog
to wander down a hill
where nothing really matters
except the little pill
he keeps the money coming in
he keeps the coffers filled
he controls your will to live
but offers no real help
i hate him, i despise him
he’s a door that leads to ill
replace him with a place of love
where we can scream and shout
and cry and sob and kick the walls
and let our feelings out
replace him with a caring guide
who never tells us what to do
but quietly leads the tested way
to open up and grow
and finally be real
help us find our inner truth
for god sake let us feel
push me as you will
but i for one,
i swear to god,
will never take
that fucking little pill
Now here before me I see
the uncrossable bridge,
a drawbridge raised beyond.
It’s made of ice.
On the other side,
holding on to imagined hurt,
clinging to thoughts,
counting,
saying nothing to me,
quivering in rage or sadness,
confused perhaps,
a victim to perception sits
in visions I cannot change.
I cannot know what she thinks.
She won’t allow me across.
I watch as I stand.
I can’t reach out,
hold
or help.
Locked out.
This is often the worst,
the worst of the worst of all.
Misunderstanding
breathes in the silence
between us,
in unspoken words
through closed doors,
no air.
This is injustice.
Heartless.
A vacuum.
A chasm.
A void.
Unwise.
Silence, a solid structure
of ancient deeply grained timbers,
sealed and barred,
a simple torture device
that stands on immovable stone.
Left with a hard decision to make,
for myself and how I feel,
the choice between anger
or sadness or nothing,
nothing at all.
I could ignore it again.
In nothingness
there’s no pain.
On days like this
I would willingly give up
on words
or thinking at all.
I can’t help myself either.
I am frozen,
emptily sad.
I used to think,
in some indulgent piteous way,
that to die could be quite sweet,
a shuffling off of all things wrong,
an end of pain and transient joy,
but now I think I’d rather stay
to face the burden of the day.
Whatever comes is worth the price
of one more moment in this life
where heaven rests inside a flower.
Such things can fill the saddest hour
if we will only turn and look.
I now delay to close the book.
a tenuous thread blown on a breeze
woven into a net, to save us
you pull on the thread, i feel it,
a bowline that twitches under my rib
sometimes that pull can hurt me
then i know that you’re feeling pain
wrapping the thread round my fingers
to bring you back closer again
the connection between us all is frail
we can twist it, strain it, break it,
or twine it, thread it, weave it,
a beautiful knot that is strong
*****
The bowline is an ancient and simple knot used to form a fixed loop at the end of a rope. It has the virtues of being both easy to tie and untie and it is easy to untie after being subjected to a heavy load. But the bowline knots name has an earlier meaning, dating to the age of sail. On a square-rigged ship, a bowline is a rope that holds the edge of a square sail towards the bow of the ship and into the wind, preventing it from being taken aback. A ship is said to be on a “taut bowline” when these lines are made as taut as possible in order to sail close-hauled to the wind.
The Dreaming Path 