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RECOVERY
My life, governed by hate and fear
For so long a violent, ticking bomb
That exploded over and over again
In that euphemistic educated phrase
Domestic Violence.
Days and nights of fear, pain, anger,
Bruises, blood, terror and seemingly never ending
Nightmares filled with images of his face and fists.
Time didn't seem to diminish the nights of horror
Even though my days grow ever stronger.
You have become so much a part of my growth
My stuttering, gradual return to sanity
It only seems natural that when
In the whisper soft velvet of night
I wake, shattered with fear
There you are, your voice soft, patient, loving,
Whispering, "It's ok... you're ok..."
And then, in the tender circle of your arms, I am.
Mid Life Crisis
His injury is benign, though deadly
being incrementally reduced by life
most of the time too burned out
for more than rattled reflections
on the day gone past.
Somehow on the road
to conquering his future
while life went on
in familiar torment
he spent far too much time
in the mean little business of survival.
When he was drawn in primal wonder
led to the awful doomed inquiry of his
middle years when the harpy's voice whispering
in dreams, at quiet sunrise, at those unforeseen instants
of drilling isolation asking with unflagging persistence
Is this as happy as he will ever be?
Does he have the right to just a little more?
Or is there really nothing better to hope for?
He waits, as he often does - silently hoping
some alternative forceful thought or feeling
will expose some less ambivalent truth
than the life he has become,
where choice and need seem indistinguishable
and he watches his life being determined
by those who seem not to know his soul
and the aching need that roils within.
But choices don't really exist
in the way he thought they would
when he was a child
and expected the regal power of adulthood
to provide clarity and insight,
so now questions remain
whose answers he hungers for.
Instead,
he finds himself clutched by resentment,
loss, numbness;
paralyzed victim of circumstance and time.
The Right One
The windswept heart seeks solace in love
but so many times
what happens is a mismatch
and one loves more
or not at all
and the pain is great
but not endless.
For each of us there is another
the right one to calm the storm that rages inside
and fear subsides
leaving in its place a space
unbounded by the limited confines of time or space.
It can happen at 40 or 60 or 80
and still feel as fine
as if it had existed
from the first moment of the universe's evolution
and if you're very wise
what you do is learn, cherish and value
all that luck and fate have offered
as a gift.
Null
If a woman is lonely, alone, afraid
Without friends or lover or family
And only the angry, hate-filled spouse
Fills her life with fear and pain
Where does she turn for a touch each day
How does she nurture her soul or find
A way to smile and recover the lost laughter
If the pain buries her beneath the weight
Until each breath is a well of cold terror
Where does she look for the ray of light
How can she ever find anything more
Than the dark, dry existence she lives each moment
If her life has been over since the day it began
A pointless odyssey of colorless despair
Where will she find a safe haven
How can she even dare to dream of love
When full she knows she'll never live it
And why would she ever want to go on
Live out her years with no touch on her skin
Or in the depths of her aching soul
That does not come from the red heat of anger
What does she have that's worth savoring
Or dreaming for or reaching for in time passing
And why would it surprise anyone at all
If one day she should pour out a handful of pills
And swallow them in groups of three or five
And sit back in the chair by the window
And watch the gathering dusk of both the day
And her life as they come to an inky end.
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