Here sits my great grief,
ready to climb,
waiting:
for black earth to clench,
for my sour heart to devour,
to exhaust my ordinary and salacious mind,
to make of me the broken part of the rock
fallen from the outcrop,
rattling in the cobalt night
to the lowest part,
on strange cold ground.
Here sits my patient grief
greater than my insults
and more mine than all my errors.
Not my largest part, but closest to the ground;
my grief clutches my tender roots,
where I drink and breathe,
and chokes me with
a drift of pins and burrs and thorns.
I will go up to cry in the hills;
the rock in the heights
will shed its dust and tremble;
stone walls and honeyed lands
will slip, unsteady, and scatter
down around me.
I will fall;
the fertility beneath me
will grind away to dust,
the wholesome green
will knock hollow.
My shelter, my homely, cradling valley
will ring as a bell with my lament.
And my Word surpasses lips for throat;
I utter my Word, start and gutter,
extinguish and re-kindle;
my teeth reborn;
my eyes grate and sear.
My Word fails to rise;
I convulse, sick at myself,
my death made small at last,
my grief gorges on my emptiness.
My Word:
now it comes,
and my great lamentation,
rubbing temples, pounding my empty head,
stupdboystupidboystupidboy;
and I daven Kaddish for the learning,
the life of learning
I set aside:
lost.
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
Seer
daisyjane
The Good Daughter
Chicken Mãâàn
the traveler
Ashley F. Miller
Salon.com
Comments
junk: i can wax endless on Be Here Now, no-guilt/regrets, Satir/FritzPerls/Esalon, but...
Reality is a 2 am thing, no matter how we parse it, yes?
education on my mind with two daughters in HS. They are high honor roll, accomplished in many ways, but ANYONE can foolishly undervalue education, so fret about them a bit.
But with this I am about some thing else, the Artist's Problem of Uncertainty, that leads us to ask: what is my art? what do i paint/write about? who am i as an artist? why don't i care more about my art?
I now know, profoundly, the answers to all that, and more. I lack utterly all uncertainty and doubt about my Art.
And if i had finished my degree i would be more financially sound, and thus be more than what I am today: a writer in the margins.
I love these margins. OS saves my life. But in 10 years, when my obligations diminish, will i have it in me to finish the novels, the screenplays, poems and stories? With all that I have to do still, for my loved ones, with two colon surgeries behind me, will i last, to finally be, daily, the Artist that I am already am, in these stolen minutes?
Because I cannot Escape my self-knowledge, because my daughters must learn from this, from me, i do not let myself off the hook. Not that I haven't tried.
Foolishness feels like the mere air itself when we embrace it, young and ignorant. And then comes the glacial weight it truly is. I must still embrace it, my foolishness: cold and huge and slow and grinding upon me. Or else I am not an honest man.
Thanks, con. I promise I will and do buck up. No sad sack me.
Except here, for this, this view inside, on OS. Because I must, or else bust, and because I know you all Know.
No need for you to do it, but it's always an option.
I still believe I will.
Here's a treat, recently published: "Smart Set Criticism" edited by Wm Nolte, recently published. Includes his newspaper columns from the Mercury, some of which have never been re-published before. Have only read about 1/3rd of it, but wonderful to dip into.
I live day to day in a positive way. I raise my daughters with hope. Filling the hole described in this poem has lead to wonderful things. I cannot know if this in fact is the better life, here, now.
This poem was me giving full voice to my late night reality, my sometimes depth, about what if. Exercising my regrets.
Hallmark employs a lot of artists in KC and good on 'em for doing so. But they are wrong, generally. Pithy uplift is only as temporary as pasteboard and a pretty sketch. When I put my arms around myself, if I am to do so with an open heart and get it all, i must embrace my mistakes, and feel the empty places those mistakes have left, where I have grown around them.