everyone knows my name,
everyone knows my face,
everyone knows my smile,
everyone knows my laugh,
everyone knows my voice,
but it doesn’t matter cause,
they don’t know my story,
they don’t know my scars,
they don’t know my lies,
they don’t know my pain,
they don’t know,
how much I’m breaking down,
how much I’m trying to hold on,
how much I’m losing my trust,
how much I’m struggling,
how much I’m dying
Barbara visiting her husband,
A trip she regularly makes,
He is staying in a place of care,
Whilst she has a well-earned break,
Geoff her husband,
Has had dementia,
For nearly 10 years,
Barbara loves him so much,
So often leaves in tears,
Is that our Margret,
Or is it Jean,
I have missed you,
Where have you been,
Your late coming today,
Where’s mum?
Is she busy cooking dinner?
is that why she’s not come,
Hi Geoff its Barbara,
how are you?
Barbara?
Barbara who?
Your wife Geoff,
Sorry love who are yer,
How’s me Dad doing,
Where’s me Mother,
Bet he’s still in pub,
Me dad likes a drink,
Will me mum be coming,
What do you think?
Jean it is you Jean,
It is Jean how’s dad?
I’ve just finished work,
It wah right bad,
Last shift for the week,
Are you listening Margret,
Last shift.. yes work done,
Can’t wait Can’t wait,
To see mum…
Can’t wait!
The measure of suffering is how distant you are from your own happiness.
There is no distance farther than that.
It’s a gap people carry around with them, sometimes oddly, with pride:
‘Look how long-suffering, look how hard working,
Look how good doing I am.’
Small wonder we’re exhausted all of the time.
Because there’s the whole of our lives to account for, to ourselves,
To the you who is listening to this.
Sure, it’s your hole and you’ll sink into it if you want to
But to me it’s just another drain pipe, a wound for life to drip out of
Everyone can see right through you
Until you find a way to plug that hole yourself.
More at http://igorgoldkind.wordpress.com/.
I’ve resigned myself
To the fact that I am
Unequivocally broken.
My cracks have been
Sealed in virgin gold,
And my scars glisten.
My wounds are a token
Reminder of my past,
Which has compelled
Me to sincerely disclose
Memories I have seen,
Dreamed, and juxtaposed.
forced to stare directly
into the glare of the
Orwellian klieg light
waterboarded by
wave upon wave
of outrageous lies
drowning in this
flood of mendacity
I yearn for the chance
to breath once again
Superior to our lumped hard sand
lies a free-spirited moon
far from all the world’s troubles
giving a laconic smirk of laughter.
Why did you not carry us
away from grief and despair?
For now we eat from our feet
and drink from our necks.
Our children know no mercy
yet our ancestors are free
our parents weak and tired
yet we ourselves are bare.
Oh, curse you wicked moon
for even the sun agglutinates our sufferings
compelled to tell when chores begin
compelled to reveal the dark surface that lies beneath us all.
But don’t you worry
for you will rue the day you showed yourself beyond our reach
revenge is for those who have nothing but hate
filling them up with schemes and plans.
For now we lie here trapped
away from the breeze that visits you
yet you so far from the torture that beats us
our day shall come moon. Our day shall come.
Right outside my window,
I peer into the morbid eyes
of this doomed world.
A world that is so filled with,
hatred and greed.
A world that is obsessed
with looking good on the
outside, while our inner
realm decomposes.
I was oblivious to this horrible
world, last night while I slept,
innocent like a baby lost in the
sweetness of dreams.
I was oblivious, while wars waged
and innocent people fell victim to
worldwide atrocities.
I slept the deep slumber of a drunkard
in a halfway house, while outside the
snow fell and, for once, I knew peace.
The battered armless tire rolls on the rough sand,
Crinkling and crunching jagged glass.
The boy with his gentle eyes and hopeful smile,
A contrast to his sooty battered frame.
He spins the wheel, his laugh echoing through the haunted land,
Past the smoking rubble and the lives buried beneath.
He pays no attention to the phantom echoes of anguished cries.
Trudging on, a silhouette against the last, pale light from the west.
The world is ending in silence. Villages
Across the globe bristle with dishes
Feeding TV into homes all the waking
Hours. An elder, last speaker of Eyak
On Earth, sits with her great grandkids
Before a communal screen. She is tired
And angry; her breathing device bites.
She longs for silence to teach some Eyak
Words. She musters the will, the strength,
To reach for the remote, to hit mute, to hit
It with all her might, for the legacy of her
People, the survival of her nation’s culture.
But the six-year-old will not yield. And she
Must suffer in silence the end of her world.
Enter this bewildered land
animals and people are lonely
the tree groans fearing,
maybe felled, hills luscious
taking cover under rains
of wraith,
this is a country my dear
which has dreams
for millions who quiver
waiting by the side of a blood-
red river,
this country my dear
I hold broken
in lotus palms
waiting to be gifted
healing alms.