Posts Tagged ‘grief’

Ladies and Gentlemen…a little Dark Poetry

Posted: January 12, 2014 in Poetry
Tags: , , , ,
2

iphone pics 9-19-2013 088                                                                                                                                                                                Welcome to the world of seasonal affective disorder…I’ve been writing & creative, however, I can’t say it’s “uplifting”, but I think we all need an outlet for those dark feelings so they don’t destroy us…

“Dead Things”
October 4, 2013

A calico crab
In pieces
On the sand
Skeleton picked clean
By scavengers
From the sky
Molecular leftovers
For scavengers
On the ground
I put the pieces
Back together
Just for show
Giving the crab
Some dignity in death
A pretty picture
Appearing whole again
Why am I on the beach
Playing with dead things?

***

The Storm
November 9, 2013

Am I in the eye?
Do I fuel it with my heart?
The path of destruction
Is touching everyone,
Not just me.
Selfish to believe
I’m that important.
Swirling, twisting
Winds of random thoughts.
Lies, like paralyzing
Lightning strikes
Thundering, shaking
Souls from the inside out.
Leaving emptiness,
Trust washed away
By the torrential rains.
Hope, like a mudslide,
Oozing away.
There is no stopping
The onslaught
Perhaps only
A small miracle
A glimmer, a spark
Of someone who
Believes in her.

***

The Judge
November 9, 2013

She appeared
From a cyber world
Painting a beautiful
Picture
Like a used car
Salesman
I think I got sold a lemon
It all seemed so good
Caught in a web
Then the retracted
Fangs
Were revealed
The bite, stinging at first,
Superficially healing
But the venom
Lasting effects
Causing doubt
Aspects of my life
Which instill pride
Dismissed as “hobbies”
Acts of romance and kindness
Considered an impulsive
Waste,
Lack of motivation, a worry.
I’m not going to stop
Being me
The venom won’t change me.
Before you judge
Find your way to the mirror
Envenomate yourself…
And clean up the cat vomit
That’s been encrusted
On your kitchen floor
For almost four months
Take off your judges robe
Lay down your gavel…
You have no right.

***

Lost In Fairytales
November 9, 2013

I saw her for brief moments
A shadow,
Defeated.
She reached out to me
From her darkness
For the one thing
That I knew
To the core of my being
Would not help
But feed the monster
Chasing her.
Sadistically, I’ve been told,
I think I fed this thing.
She denies it.
Lost in a world of
Falsehood and fairytales,
So lost, each story
Blends into the other.
Her confusion is
My confusion.
I don’t understand
The stories anymore.
Contradiction
Manipulation
Playing on my sympathy
I can’t help her
She’s disrupting my path
To my own peace.
Empty promises prevail.
I’ve worked too hard
To let it crumble now.
I knew it would be this way.
But I let it happen
I opened the door…

***

Psychic
November 9, 2013

Who believes in
Fortune-tellers?
Intellect says
It’s all bullshit
But the promise
Of a hopeful future
Touches emotions.
I predicted her future.
No need for a mystical
Gypsy
Or smoke and mirrors.
I knew this would
Happen.
I told her through
Anger, tears, and
Desperation.
She wouldn’t believe me,
I was too invested.
So I waited.
And it all happened.
I wanted to bruise
Her some more
With an “I told you so”,
She came to be so battered
so fragile
Or so I thought.
Was it a disguise?
Why are my psychic abilities
Blocked now?
I can’t detect her
When she’s draining my
Rebuilt soul.

***

13th Step Vampire
November 9, 2013

Alone, scared, broken
She entered
The room.
Veins still burning
From the needle.
All eyes on her,
They smelled her fear,
The fresh blood.
From the shadows
He sees her,
Sits beside her,
With an understanding
Smile.
Brooding, pathetic
Stories
Emanate from his
Twisted past.
Weak, vulnerable,
She feels sorry for him
Disregarding her own
Pain
She sacrifices her
Throat
To the vampire…
In the beginning
She is mesmerized,
Enchanted
Giving her life’s blood
Willingly
Until there’s almost
Nothing left.
He changes, transforms.
The demon he kept
Well-hidden
Has resurfaced
Unleashing fury
On her already
Ravaged existence
Nothing left
No strength to fight
She runs and hides
Inside a bottle of pills.

And it begins again…

***

Regrets
November 10, 2013

It’s been 8 months
Since you left
This existence.
I search the past
For happy moments
We had together.
The happiest
Having coffee together
Sitting in silence
Mirrored mannerisms…
I have your hands
I look at them and
Think of you.
Why did you let yourself
Become so broken
And weak?
Why didn’t you reach
Out for help?
So many people loved
And cared about you
You pushed them away
Until it was too late
We scrambled to your
Side
Unaware of the
Severity
Turmoil ensued,
Painful decisions,
Experienced,
Yet inexperienced.
My knowledge
Fell on deaf ears.
If I could have been
By your side for your
Last breath
I would have bravely,
Unselfishly,
Helped you face the
Unknown
So you could finally
Find your peace.

***

Ghosts
November 10, 2013

They surround me,
The dead.
I can sense them
They come to me
Through flashes of light
In my peripheral vision
They visit me
In my dreams
With cryptic messages
I sometimes
Can’t interpret
I feel them
Watching me
Protecting me.
Somehow, I’m not afraid
They’ve never hurt me
I’ve only been touched once
It was fleeting
I knew who’s spirit
Was responsible
I understood the message.
Do I cling to something
That doesn’t exist?
A story? A legend?
Hope of an eternal life.
I absorb these stories
Like a sponge.
Learning away my skepticism
For the hope
There is another, eternal
Plane of existence.

***

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“Nowhere Man”

Posted: May 5, 2013 in Life
Tags: , ,
1

dad2

“He’s a real nowhere man, sitting in his nowhere land, making all his nowhere plans for nobody”

When I was a teenager my parents split up. My Dad had a girlfriend but continued to stay with my mother as well. His life with his girlfriend was a secret to everyone. He spent time between both places, so I always referred to him as the “Nowhere Man”. He was with his family but usually when he was there he was drinking and abusive. When he left we “knew” but didn’t really “know” where he was, what his other life consisted of, so he was really “nowhere” to me.
On March 10, 2013, my father, Kenneth Ellis Arnold, Sr. passed away from prostate cancer. He was 65 years old.
The last week of his life I couldn’t go visit him. I could make all kinds of excuses as to why I didn’t visit him, but I won’t. The bottom line is, I didn’t want to watch him die. I knew it was close, I could see it in his eyes, I could see his fear. I’m a nurse, death is a familiar thing for me, but not when it’s your own, someone you love, your family.
I think about my Dad all of the time. He has so much potential in his life. So many things he could have accomplished. He was an alcoholic and never admitted it or sought treatment. He had a few health scares over the years and he would quit for awhile but always went back to drinking. He was much mellower in the last few years though. He became cranky rather than explosive. I attribute the alcoholism to his death. Perhaps he would have gotten more aggressive treatment for his prostate cancer if he wasn’t drinking.
I don’t want to remember my father as a destitute alcoholic. He had alot of attributes that I admired. He was handsome. All of my girlfriends from grammar and high school have told me recently that he was the “hot” Dad. He was smart. As a kid, I used to look through his old notebooks and drawings from when he went to school to be a steamfitter. His mechanical drawings were impressive. Meticulous and neat. His grades for these drawings were almost always “A’s”. That made me proud of him. Once, in junior high, I had a science project to make a kite out of household materials that would actually fly. My Dad built me a kite out of sticks from the yard, newspaper, string, and old torn up yellow curtains for the tail. I took it to school, so PROUD of that kite. It not only flew, I got an “A”. My Dad made me that kite! MY DAD! I’ll never forget that as long as I live.
He was my protector. Although at times he could be abusive, he would never allow anyone to hurt his kids. When I had boyfriends that were unsavory characters and were not taking “no” for an answer when we broke up, all Dad had to do was answer the front door and they never bothered me again.
He had a sense of humor. I remember many times at family functions when he had everyone laughing their asses off. Even in the hospital when he was in excruciating pain and dying, he was cracking jokes and being funny, telling funny stories. When I would visit him, usually on Sundays, we would have a beer together, just the two of us, and we would laugh. I cherish those memories.
And when he used to play softball. He was a power hitter. He knocked it over the fence often. He wasn’t the fastest runner, I inherited that from him, but he was good. His team always went to the championship. He taught my brother baseball and my brother ended up playing professional baseball for almost 10 years. Dad deserves some credit for that!
My father’s death has caused a small ripple in our family dynamic. Because of the “secret life” he had been living, after he passed away alot of old feelings resurfaced, for my brother and I mostly because we knew Dad differently than my sister, who is much younger than we are and doesn’t have the same experiences and memories that we do. I’m not going into detail about this “ripple” because it’s fixable and will heal itself in time. We are family and should love and support one another before it’s too late to make things right.
I have some regrets where my father is concerned. I wish I had spent more time with him these last few years. I enjoyed his company. The last time I saw him before he passed away he was actually bragging to his nurses about me. He told them I was a nurse too and that I was really good at art and writing. Finally, he acknowleged me after years of struggling for his approval. I will NEVER forget that day. The last thing we said to each other as I walked out of his hospital room was, “I love you.” And that’s what I want to remember most about my Dad.