Category Archives: Poetry

On Compassion

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Watching Kato kitty be sick is difficult

I sort of understand his pain

It’s not like raging menstrual cramps are the same as recovering from surgery

But I know what it is to feel like shit

For hours

When all you can do is whimper

And you’re too miserable to keep fluids or meds down

And your world is just pain, and nausea, and the hope that it’ll be over

I know what that is

 

I also know

What it is to be alienated

To walk around with a little touch of a serial killer inside you

To watch people cry

And feel like some kind of unbreakable spirit

But ten layers down you ache to know that release

Respect and envy their vulnerability

And wonder what it is

To be human

 

We are made by what we used to be

I have been given this compassion

I am grateful

To have been there

And to be back

Even if it’s just

So I can give a cat sympathetic pets

 

When my mom died

One person broke through to me

One

She listened

She asked questions

But most important

She did not pity

And because she regarded me as one with strength

I was able to be weak in front of her

Because she had watched her father die

She had that perfect compassion

The kind that really means something

 

I hope to be

Crazy days

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A little bit about overcoming my emotional repression. This one was hard to share, I actually wrote it yesterday but didn’t have the courage to share it until now. Funny, what I’m afraid of.

 

What an emotional day.

I felt crazy at work to start with

The photographer’s flattery got me off keel

Then I got screamed at by a random road rager

Though I thought I took it well, when I got home I cried

But… in the photographs, my smile is real

And the tears had come freely

For me, this is a big step forward.

I rewatched a show and it had more import

And I thought, oh my God,

I’ve been missing out on so much of the storytelling experience

I’m going to have to read all the classics over again

Goddamnit all.

In Fashion

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There is an ever changing beauty standard.

It is so slow, it can only be noticed

Every ten years

And the women’s hair and faces magically morph to meet this standard.

It’s like they don’t even have to try to change

It just happens.

Every ten years

The clothes change.

Everyone wears what is presented to them by the fashionable stores

And advertisement.

Every ten years

The human body changes with it.

Big butts, big boobs, tall shoes, abs, toned arms, long legs, tall hair, thick eyebrows, hair color, skin color

It’s incredible how much we can change of ourselves.

Every ten years

The music standards change

Everyone sings with the same voice

Everyone plays the same instruments

And has the same emotion

Everyone lives in the same house

Reads the same books

Watches what is on Netflix

Has the same job

Is this happiness?

What the hell are we

We are ants

Without a queen

Following the ant in front of us

In a death spiral.

Kitty has bladder stones

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I don’t want my kitty to die.

I don’t want him to be sick.

I hate seeing him in pain.

He’s just fluffy and nice and doesn’t need this.

Hopefully surgery will help.

Poor kitty.

I want him to play again.

It’s my fault you know.

I fed him spinach

Only a little bit as a treat each day

But it must have built up in his system.

It’s frustrating.

You try and do the right thing

And another wrong thing is done anyway.

You keep the kitty inside

To prevent it getting hit by cars

Instead it gets struck by disease

Obese from boredom and inactivity

You feel bad for keeping it inside so you give it greens

Then it gets another disease from that.

Fucking cats should fucking be outside.

I’d so much rather he be hit by a car than this.

But Don doesn’t get it.

Modern medicine is a shitty fucking thing

You get to stretch out a life

You can’t really fix anything

But you can choose your manner of death, I guess.

What is the Tao way to handle this?

The Tao way would be to let him be outside and play

He would be so much happier

He would get his exercise

And unlimited grass to eat

And unlimited creatures to murder in that cold sociopathic cat way

And unlimited risk.

I want to let him have what he wants

Kitties are perfect in their Tao

They know what’s good for them

Unless it’s spinach.

The Bell Curve

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The other day Don asked me, “Have you ever noticed this about language, everything comes in threes?” He was talking about jokes, fables, lists in speech (e.g. life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness).

I thought about it and said that maybe it’s a common speech device because we need three items to be able to recognize a pattern.

And then I thought about this concept again. I’m always seeing it lately. I wrote it right after I wrote the cycles poem because I didn’t feel like I’d adequately conveyed the concept, and they tie together. One bell curve is half of a circle… if you blur your eyes when you plot it out.

Anyway, because it’s always in my brain, here it is:

 

Writers are taught to see

The bell curve of a plot.

Rising action, climax, falling action.

 

Sex has a climax. It fits the bell curve perfectly.

 

The life of a mayfly.

Birth, hours of development, a climax of mating, death.

 

Every little segment of time

No matter how small

Has a climax.

 

Inhale, hold, exhale.

 

Cut it smaller.

Just inhale.

The breath climaxes near the end, when you can’t take in any more and must stop.

 

A hummingbird beats its wings.

Lift, hold, fall.

The hummingbird darts to the next flower.

He arrives, partakes, departs. 

The hummingbird takes a meal.

He hungers, sips nectar, stops when he is full.

The hummingbird is caught by a predator.

Fear, struggle, acceptance.

 

We live in bell curves.

They all link together

To form the line of our lives:

A golden spiral.

One long corkscrew from the past to the future.

A double helix of plot curves

A never ending cycle

Of birth, death, birth, death.

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