Dark Childhood Poem

       
       
*        
       
a little girl locked in a closet        
with just a crease of light        
penetrating the darkness        
underneath the door        
       
*        
       
three years old        
abandoned by mommy        
who lost her way home        
being schizophrenic        
       
*        
       
sent to foster care        
neglected and abused        
wild in nature        
       
*        
       
into the hands of Christians        
who told her they would be family        
accidentally letting the f word slip        
the sting of soap on her tongue        
       
*        
       
nose rubbed in her own pee        
when she wet the bed        
being emotionally damaged        
       
*        
       
this is the broken part of me        
a little girl lost        
still locked in that closet        
       
*        
       
fingers reaching under      
a darkened door        
forever reaching for the light        
       
       
       
 
 
*note this is true story a part of my life
   
   
   
   
   

For in a time, when everywhere,
the child I was took comfort in
the dangers stalking, hunting us,
my kind, at every turn it chose.
Was where I found a solace in
the tribal rites, lord of the flies,
as bitter herbs I passive ate
because my hunger was so great.

Picked for my lack of size and years,
the tirade with the herbs which had
beleaguered spirit, start to trust
the pain one day would turn the tide.
Approval from humiliate
increase in skill & strength & size
to show the path on which I’d walk.
In this awakening, I felt
the apex sun upon my face,
and joy within my beating heart.
Uplifted from the quiet tone
of sorrow I had always known,
as being one, and of the same.

It started then as I began
to know the entity of love,
whose voice’s lift spoke to my mind.
Within my very soul was God,
whose teachings opened me to pray
as self is opened like a seed.
As it would grow then split again,
while spilling forth more joy until
I realized was not the same,
it was the answer to a prayer.




#KahlilGibran

NaPoGloPoWriMo 2019

My interpretation is also based on the harsh realities of my early youth, before and up to the realization of my spirituality and faith.

.

The ever open bag of sweets    
The hugs you thought were love      
Come my dear have one of these      
Unwrapped a mind of putrid scum      
A lick of my ice cream      
And blow the dandelion clock away      
Our secret to not share, no way      
A relative, an uncle        
How brief the accidental fumble      
Too embarrassed to feel dishevelled      
All family must stay together      
That secret locked his guilty pleasure      
To sit upon the lap and watch      
Cartoons you loved so much      
Just rearange your dress so it dont crease      
The crafty move of a filthy beast      
Set the scale of the family norm      
Doctors and nurses exploring each form      
To go to the places hidden underneath      
My parents would now cry in disbelief      
The subtle spin of the secret tryst      
The bribes that sweetened his sins emphasis      
To manipulate just the innocent      
Lured presents wrapped the cruel torment      
Locked and ingrained the pain never relents

I didn’t know about politics or the status quo,
I didn’t understand the right versus the left,
All I knew were images shown on the news
Until the war hit close to home

I had never seen so many burning buses
I had never seen so many men somber
I had never seen so many women crying
I had never seen so much blood like that

I had never heard bullets whiz by like that
I had never felt tanks roll by the boulevard
Shaking the streets and passageways
And deafening blasts that stun the soul

I had never seen men on the streets like that
Brains splattered on the pavement
Entrails displayed for all to see
I had never seen eyes like that

But when you’re only eight years old
The world is difficult to understand
For there is no simple explanation
When innocence slips away just like that

When I was younger,
With blonde hair, hanging lazily
Down my back in soft curls,
At that age of young innocence.
The summers, usually so light and airy
Usually full of strong rays of sunshine
With children laughing and smiling.
 
But that one summer
Felt so empty, so dark and heavy.
The idea of death was so unknown,
But now it hung above our heads
Changing everything.
 
After that day I was never able to touch
His old, hard, and leathery skin again
With the tubes sticking out
Of his frail and ghostly body
Like sharp needles.
 
I could still smell the wintry freshness
Of those mints he always handed
Out to us grandchildren.
We pretended like he was never there.
 
In my memories, he was never able to move freely.
He felt constricted to the depths
Of his bedroom in the back corner
Or silently sitting in his chair,
Never being able to hear his
Once rich and powerful voice.
We were trying to onto  
Something that we couldn’t understand.
You told me that some people
Were going to come and take him away.
I didn’t ask why. I didn’t care
About him until he was long gone
And I thought that maybe,
Someday he would come back,
But he never did.  
 
I was never able to meet the man
That my grandfather was.
Back to a time when he was healthy,
Before the sickness and death.
I wish that I had been able to meet
The man who loved his family
So dearly, so thoughtfully.
The man who I heard so many
Crazy and wild stories about.
 
That summer is now long gone.
But I think back to it often,
Forever remembering the pain
And darkness in that cold summer day.

'The trouble with being a woman, Skeezix,
is being a little girl in the first place'
 
'If this is Hell, then Hell could not be much,
 neither as special or as ugly as I was told.'
 
                      -Anne Sexton
 
 
I am diagnosed dragging on a Camel,
staring at the river, full of all the selves
of detachmemt from my actual one.
They used to be me as one self when I was
fused into the wall of my mother,
before I came here to this bridge.
 
I am deranging like the splitting haloes
of car headlights as they rush on that  
great freeway to somewhere, nowhere.
The river is a subway and the trains are  
stories of the dead derailed there.
There are pale orbs like faces saying,
we told you of such, you cannot be
cured of this indifference;
I have become the Horrid I always was,
child of a stranger, refolding into that mystery.
 
The house is gone with its fine bone china  
and good silver, replaced with pills and notebooks.
The river swallowed the rest of it, husband, children;
the oily tragedy floats in a slick of remnants
in the same shade of black it always wore  
when I dreamed of it, musing Nana with her
afternoon tea, saying, I am supposed to be
someone who cares, why can't I love this
like a great inhalation of medicine  
so as not to destroy it.
 
The river is a great swallower of
fate's shortcomings, I figure,
if I shoot my last hopes into it
I will be that much wiser;
why can't I be the depths it reaches?
Am I so shallow in my forty years of life,
drawing on feelings that come and go,
where is the great accomplisher
to reveal my wounds and bleed them dry?
 
To only know, to only know.
 
To only be that solace I seek,
to throw myself into it, or to be
the tossed stone that sinks
into this river of memory
as if it were Hell on Earth
glistening under the city lights
flickering its dim reminders,
dead faces loving me back  
as my child self loved them
wholly, once.
 
But now, at last we meet,
that great Mother of reunions,
I see her glaring in the forming mists
which forewarn me in a tragic welcoming.
Just once, I saw it:
The corpse I am destined to become.
 
       .....