Poets tackle difficult subjects sometimes. For a couple months last year (starting right around Thanksgiving), I wrote about a severe blue funk I found myself in. I stopped writing those blog posts, however, because several of my faithful disciples said they were just too sad and dark.
Sharon Olds gets burned by love . . .
Burn Center
by: Sharon Olds
When my mother talks about the Burn Center
she's given to the local hospital
my hair lifts and wavers like smoke
in the air around my head. She speaks of the
beds in her name, the suspension baths and
square miles of lint, and I think of the
years with her, as her child, as if
without skin, walking around scalded
raw, first degree burns over ninety
percent of my body. I would stick to doorways I
tried to walk through, stick to chairs as I
tried to rise, pieces of my flesh
tearing off easily as
well-done pork, and no one gave me
a strip of gauze, or a pat of butter to
melt on my crackling side, but when I would
cry out she would hold me to her
hot griddle, when my scorched head stank she would
draw me deeper into the burning
room of her life. So when she talks about her
Burn Center, I think of a child
who will come there, float in water
murky as tears, dangle suspended in a
tub of ointment, suck ice while they
put out all the tiny subsidiary
flames in her hair near the brain, and I say
Let her sleep as long as it takes, let her walk out
without a scar, without a single mark to
honor the power of fire.
It's a strange metaphor that Olds uses--this Burn Center with all its fire imagery--to describe the complicated relationship she had with her mother. Yet, I get it. Love can burn and scar you. However, Olds, in her ending lines, is newborn, resurrected from the flames without a dimple of scar on her body.
Tonight, I can tell you that I'm sort of resurrected, as well. While I haven't completely shaken off the darkness, I can say that there's a lot of sun in my life now. Yes, I still experience whelming moments, but they are much less frequent. Yes, I cry occasionally, but the tears don't last as long. And I'm able to get out of bed in the morning without dread in my heart.
I won't go into all I've done to get to this point of near return, but I have my wife and many close family and friends to thank for their love and support through these last three or so months. It has been an uphill battle, but many helping hands pulled me along.
I am so grateful and blessed.
Saint Marty wrote an abstractly concrete poem tonight based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:
Choose an abstract word such as love, hate, obsession, freedom, success, etc. for your title, then write a poem that is made up completely of concrete images. For example, if I chose the word "Love" for my title, I might use images such as two robins on the branch of a cherry tree or the heart of a cinnamon roll. Alternatively, if I chose the word "Shame," I might use images such as a bus stop covered in vines or a child walking away. Don't feel you need to be completely literal--allow for a little mystery, letting your images do the work for you.
Depression
by: Martin Achatz
A church steeple at street's end
jabs its finger into God's black eye.
Myrtle, my neighbor's Great Dane,
barks and barks for an hour straight
while a mouse darts across my hardwood
floor, its nails like melting icicles.
Unread books are heaped on my ottoman, one
cover, a black-and-white clown staring at me.
Leftover lasagna beside a can of flat
Diet Coke in the fridge. Not hungry or thirsty.
The burned-out lightbulb in the living
room fills the air with darkness.
An unfinished poem in my journal,
its final line crossed out and
No comments:
Post a Comment