Now! Two Poems In One…

(poem and bold sub-poem(this is an experiment)

I

There is no redemption that erases the memory of violence.
There is no way out…of it.

Pain is the unifier, so normal plain and clear.
The past is expected - the future a fear.
I could be this me for ever and ever.

What matters a prayer?
What matters a dream?
What matters a love?

Everything is in ruins; within – without me.
No vessel holds or contains me.
…everything is fly away temporary;
ephemeral like angels on birthdays.

Wanting has no power, so I remain want-less…

I am the servant of disaster. The brother of blight in the famine field -I have killed the innocence in my children. I have cut their hair and thrown them into the world - shivering, naked and abandoned (This was all I knew how to do). I am as afraid now, as I was when I was a beaten thing in the shadow of my dust bowl father’s purgatory.

II

Where can an “I” be in the “begin again” world of the “make believe” - in the world of its salvation? I know that I came from a little house of horrors on Rexton Street; that I was raised by torturers. See me knock on the door of the mask maker – I want to be his chameleon.

If I discard a little of myself each day… will I finally be nothing enough to wither away?

I promised to do this… I promised - to never be too much to make the mommy-daddy monsters be afraid. When the mommy-daddy monsters are afraid something “worser” than death happens

I am made the “never was“. That is what it will be like when-if-when the shadow ever shows the parents where the lights turn on.

Devils and demons ride my back whispering commands - they say “being nothing is better than being something”… They say “know your place, be useless - never change”.

Why (if all roads lead to the same old place of death and fear) try?

The stigma of not being able to change or make a difference in my life or in the lives of others will be my legacy. I am no longer the “Doubt Man”. I am the “Certain Man” - certain that what I do will fail. I am now the “Why Try Man” - the “Lets Fall Down Man” - the “I Ache Like A Stabbed Doll Man”.

III

This is the part in my story where I the writer reveal that I am a liar…

That I have only written about a part of me. What I have written is true, but only partially true. I live between the tension of what I have written and another truth. The truth is I changed after realizing that hope is an “action” - but only of the hopeless. I know now that I am a knower; a chess player advancing bishops.

The past is shabby, flabby, and corpulent; a poser; a body building contestant who before competitions pumps himself up enough to make himself look scary - after hours smoking in his dressing room his wrinkles become a road map to the way he has always felt like a has-been.

IV

I am not that failure. I know that I will not be radiant or glorious if I wear my mother’s jewelry; I will never be her shiny thing. I cannot fit in my fathers boxing trunks - or win his battles - it is not possible, because I cannot do so as a child…I am grown; a man now with my own destiny.

I will now be me, in my own skin; seeing through lies even as I tell them. The past has only the power I give it. It is only a story; an important story, but not the story happening right now. I am glad to have lived it. I am glad I remember it - all its details. But while I am interested in interviewing its ghost, I am not interested in being inhibited by them.