Below, please find a poem very much in progress. It will always be so. Each time I attempt to express the encounter that engendered the poem, I falter and fail. I will never get it right because the original conversation contained convoluted premises full of pain and anger. Neither party is capable of expressing what he/she wishes to; however, each tries mightily. Perhaps you have had such conversations wherein the actual aim is not to communicate, but rather to wound. When such a dynamic is in play, “we have a failure to communicate,” a sentence spoken by two characters in the 1967 movie, Cool Hand Luke.
Blame and Presumption
Do you think God let him come
home at the end? I do not presume to know
the mind of god
Somehow, he knew I needed him here
You, who gave him no rest at all?
How can you say that to me
now that he’s gone? Because your “love” caused him
complete deprivation
You don’t understand! You never tried
You’re the one who should have died! I remain unskewered by
your cunning words
You leave and never even say good-bye
You never care I’m leaving now
Interpret as you will
Both morph into
rising reflections
You can’t stay with me an hour in my grief
much less watch with me a week May flights of angels forget your name
Take from off my neck this steel chain
Go then! I’ll forget your name
That’s just as well Your deviant blessing
or emergent pain?
A door closes between
the two
One cold. One mean
Neither true
Background:
For the first time in the series of poems appearing in this Almanac’s Monday postings, I find myself too distressed to reveal the incident that engendered the poem. So, please forgive me for even attempting to capture its essence. The encounter, primal and ruthless, exhibits the type of episode that forever remains unfinished because it can neither be expressed nor resolved.
Exploration 1: Are you familiar with conversations wherein both blame and presumption operate? What does it feel like? Unresolved? Full of anger? Accepting of things as they are? Compassion for the other person?
Exploration 2: Within the first four lines, a word appears in two different forms: God on the left and god on the right. Any thoughts on why the variance in capitalization? And no, this is not a mistake.
Exploration 3: The last line is “Neither true.” These two words imply that everything that is said above is false, or at least that the exchange is not authentic. Any thoughts on this?
Jack Pine Savage
Wow! This sounds like a relationship ending argument. Maybe not. I'm always surprised what terrible things people can reconcile after saying or doing.
ReplyDeleteI'm always the one on the receiving end of these "dialogues," trying to douse the fire as quickly as possible. Spineless? I suppose, but I'm harking back to my early evolutionary days as a worm.
Ennaways, God-god: believers capitalize, others don't out of respect for the views of non-believers.
"Neither true": the words are authentic enough, but perhaps there's an underlying love that will emerge once the fire has died down.