The Generational Rage

For my family, especially Mom, who managed to heal & move forward.

"He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes."-Bible, Proverbs 13:24, KJV

My young great-grandma watched
as her mother, my great-great grandma
was fucked by my great-great grandpa
while her uterus was falling down & out
through her vagina.
When she grew older,
a mountain of a woman
my great grandma
with The Generational Rage
beat her children
ruthlessly
with unspared rods & belts & cable wires
& devilish biblical lashings,
compressing their souls into darkened masses.

The darkened masses exploded:
Aunt Ruthanne ran away,
Uncle Ronnie, slave of a God-shaped blackhole, raged,
Mammaw caved
to the 60s, heart-tattood gypsy,
acid-tripper, drug-dealer,
begat five children, in and out of
five wedlocks.
Five children:
going to school black from oil stove,
no clean clothes,
starving, picking hog-corn,
cockroaches scurrying
over all of them sleeping on a tent-floor,
and Great-Grandma beat all the grand children
with unspared rods & belts & racecar track,
& devilish biblical lashings,
and Mammaw’s five husbands, countless boyfriends
molested & raped & sodomized every one of them
and their souls, too, were compressed
into blackened masses.

The blackened masses exploded:
Aunt Dawn choked & died as a baby, Tylenol shoved down her howling throat,
Aunt Roseanne had five kids, one killed by a crack head, and became a crackhead for awhile,
Aunt Amy had five kids, two became incest, that got fondled & fucked by her BDSM boyfriends,
My mom, Yvonne, had two kids who she drug through & out of her temporary explosion,
Uncle Timmy had five kids, fucked his daughter (producing deformed baby), and got ten years for Incest.

And every single fucking one of our souls
has been compressed to black holes:
black holes feeding on life,
feeding on drugs, sex, violence,
denial, rage, sadness, hopelessness
(some in waves, others forever).
But through various approaches
a few of us have managed
to heal, to move forward.
My way
is poetry.

Sofa of Rumination- Part 3: Role Model

Awake, again,

tired and dreading,

rush around, get ready to go

zoom on the freeway to the cube.

In the cube I look up other poets, read their stuff

and write secretly in Notepad

and work on mundane tasks or look busy

and kill time for 7, 8, 9 hours

zoom on the freeway to the gym, grocery, car repairs, errands.

Arrive, again at the sofa to ruminate,

smoke cigarettes, drink coffee

and do god-knows-what else:

read poetry

scribble in beat-up notebooks

about men.

Tonight I feel just fine

without them.

Draw messy abstractions,

wander at twilight,  when the sky is

deep bright blue, starless,

cars zooming through

this  neighborhood,

and a single bird,

perched on the roof of an abandoned warehouse

asks

no questions.

Expecting Miracles

Photolysis: : chemical decomposition by the action of radiant energy (as light)--Webster

 

I lie to myself, yet expect unadulterated truth from others.

He’s looking at me,

eyes bluer than the sky,

face behind a fish bowl.

I can’t see his eyes, the fish, or the bowl:

I’m blind.

I’m sitting on a pile of sticks,

imagining it’s a god’s chair.

We’re both disconnected, but I don't see that. I imagine him as Superman, my Soul Mate: superhuman, perfect, preserved from the havoc of truth.

My chair is broken.

His fish are dead.

He says he isn’t perfect,

but is required to be, inside my head:

where forms of perfection

dwell in a dodecahedron

with amber glass walls, for preservation

from photolysis.

I expect…miracles, and long for intense connection. Sabotage myself by accepting only perfection. I see only what I want to see.

The form inside the dodecahedron,

is fingerpainting symbols on glass walls,

codes, smoke signs, trying to send a message,

but that message is lost: I’m blind.

I’m missing out on what he wants to tell me. Trying to force men, dad, love, and God into this ideal is preventing me from achieving Oneness with reality, and truly being close to someone.

He wants to be free,

has something to express to the world and me,

but as long as he’s trapped in there,

he has only twelve walls, finger paint

and adulterated objects

I decide to toss in.

Nearly impossible to write a novel or a sonnet

with finger paint,

no letters or tools,

only symbols.

 _______________________________________

This poem is loosely based on Conundrum.

Sofa of Rumination- Part 1: Ennui

On the Sofa of Rumination,

rejected by self, like clockwork,

the Poet awakens from a sleep better

than life, dry, drained of passion.

The blood red, black, & white sparkle passion,

wrung out of her, like a rag,

meanders in street sides,

down the sewer.

You could peek down the sewer grates

into the dark reservoir,

and see it glittering

among the septic waste.

Toilet paper, trash, & shit water

mixes with luminescent passion;

the stiff, crusted rag— her body—

stinks of dried up dishwater, must

Mold, and the stale body stench

of the routine, past its expiration date,

rots. Blear over spirit, mistaken for

pain.

Written 18 July 2013

Sofa of Rumination- Part 2: Bad Words (Bad Poetry)

Jealous slut
ugly narcissist
in a zealous rut
marred & missed.

Fuck me hard
spray heart with defogger
selfishly scarred
hippocampus keylogger.

Finish me off
incomplete collection
chlamydia cough
discontinued connection.

Shut me out
no good drama queen
conceited pout
two bit sex routine.

Black white red
monotonous grey
not quite dead
dropdown menu way.


26 June 2013-19 July 2013

Wouldn't it be great?

Deprivation.

I’m invoking a blank wall.

He doesn’t respond—

not to my dearest caresses

and loving gestures.**

Maze (still)—

Running down every dead-end corridor,

psychotically beating on every door. **

Wanted you to look me in the face

& finally tell me

I wasn’t worth:

time, effort, care, love.

To you.

The obsession, stationary, sitting (always when I Finally Sit Still)

then it’s there, in my mind, brutal, this time not for food

or something I actually need,

but for exactly what is destroying me:

Love.

Desperate-hungry search for something

that isn’t there.

Inside the object

of my affection.

Who’s unaffected.

He holds the “key” that I need to unlock

some supposed treasure.

Some… thing.

Something worth staying here on Earth for, in the moment,

worth not dissociating from the present.

Or I think I see a key in there.

I see what I want to see.

I was always invoking a

blank wall.

The reels of my mind projected onto its white surface.

Before my eyes flashed The Fantasy

of knights in white armor,

fairy tails, a brainwashing, heart-denigrating

wonderland of romantic, emotional, sexual

devotion.

The Farce: that someone would hold me and keep me as theirs.

Not so.

Let it go.

Let go the Obsession & Fantasy

Let go of love.

Tear down the walls of the maze

(I’ve been in so long,

since the First Abandonment.)

Let go of the want,

quash the dream.

That is the solution to set me free.

The bane of gods and kings,

the bitterness of knowing [we] are free.**

Do I really want to be free?

I run & run & run

like a rat on a wheel, a treadmill.

"If I could truly be free,

would I?"

I asked myself that when I was reading

some self-help book

in a bad mood

and it would be great, wouldn’t it?

To set myself free from

the emotional mess of the chase.

I’d invest less time in men

and I think

more energy into my own life,

hobbies—painting, music, creativity, travel.

I’d have more 

time to write

and, “Wouldn’t it be great?”

I wonder, as I sit,

lonely, dreaming

waiting for something to happen.