In between   (a poem)
.
my mind struggles against its own illusion
nightmare tumbles out into still morning
light is heavy,
a fog of echoes...
and I am caught
.
day dreams the sunlight
dreams light the day
and I am caught in between
mourning echoes...
like a stillborn ghost
who can't take a breath in the present

….
  
I live on a tropical island and just want to go surfing with my husband, but the nausea in the early morning as I try to eat  breakfast and drive with him to the beach is so uncomfortable.  Day after day it makes even surfing a chore, and I consider not going anymore.  Background anxiety and unreasonable irritation interferes with our marriage, frustrates him enough to want me out.  

For me, a trip to the grocery store or meeting a group of people awakens the same dreadful fear as rockclimbing a cliff. Perspective has been lost in the extremes.  I try to gain some control over this hindering nuisance, seeking situations that bring the same surges of adrenaline so I can learn to master it.  If I can just push past the avoidance that would keep me inside doing nothing, if I can just ignore the feeling I want to throw up, if I can just get out there, I am rewarded with life’s potential beauty eventually.  Many days I do enjoy the thrill of mountain biking or connection with nature when surfing, but there are too many days of internal struggle that reduce what should be enjoyable to a relentless chore of wrestling inner demons.

The VA offers a few sessions of marriage counseling, and the doctor begins to explain PTSD.  ***, I’ve learned to cope with an unreliable brain, but now there’s this?  From what I understand (and that’s just me, an amateur philosopher) Sometimes the brain is so traumatized, that the memory is literally sealed off, encapsulated, protecting it from changing.  If later something happens that is similar, the brain triggers avoidance responses as a take-no-chances survival mechanism.  Literally the brain is protecting one’s self from one’s self.  This all-or-nothing strategy works fending off potential dinosaur attacks, but in our complex society, these automatic avoidance behaviors complicate functioning and well being.  Life becomes an attitude of constant reaction instead of motivated intention.

The website for the National center for PTSD says.  “After a trauma or life-threatening event, it is common to have reactions such as upsetting memories of the event, increased jumpiness, or trouble sleeping. If these reactions do not go away or if they get worse, you may have Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.”  

“Common reactions to trauma are:
• Fear or anxiety: In moments of danger, our bodies prepare to fight our enemy, flee the situation, or freeze in the hope that the danger will move past us. But those feelings of alertness may stay even after the danger has passed. You may:feel tense or afraid, be agitated and jumpy, feel on alert.  
• Sadness or depression: Sadness after a trauma may come from a sense of loss---of a loved one, of trust in the world, faith, or a previous way of life. You may:have crying spells, lose interest in things you used to enjoy, want to be alone all the time, feel tired, empty, and numb.  
• Guilt and shame: You may feel guilty that you did not do more to prevent the trauma. You may feel ashamed because during the trauma you acted in ways that you would not otherwise have done. You may:feel responsible for what happened, feel guilty because others were injured or killed and you survived.  
• Anger and irritability: Anger may result from feeling you have been unfairly treated. Anger can make you feel irritated and cause you to be easily set off. You may:lash out at your partner or spouse, have less patience with your children, overreact to small misunderstandings.  
• Behavior changes: You may act in unhealthy ways. You may:drink, use drugs, or smoke too much, drive aggressively, neglect your health, avoid certain people or situations.”   It lists four main symptoms: reliving the event, avoiding situations that remind of the event, feeling numb, and feeling keyed up (also called hyperarousal)”

Four words strung together: Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.  They’ve become a tired cliché, exhausted from the endless threat of random cruelty camouflaged in banality, weary of the weight shouldering back the wall that separates death and gore from the living.  Living was a reflex beyond willpower and devoid of choice. Control was self-deception.  The mind was so preoccupied with A: survival, B: sanity, in that order.  Rest was a cruel illusion.  The tank was drained, no room for emotions ditched.  Empathy took too much effort, fear was greedy.  Hopefully they can be remembered and found on the other side, if there is one.  Sleep deprived cells were left hyper-alert from the imminent, shot up and addicted to adrenaline.  Living was Fate and Chance, and meant leaving that time and place sealed in forgetfulness.  

Now PTSD is a worn out acronym, a cold shadow of what it feels like.  I try to think of something more personal that can describe the way it randomly visits me, now resigned to its familiar unwelcome influence.  It steals through my brain, flying ahead of me with its own agenda of protecting sabotage.  Its like the Guardian Trickster of Native American legend.  Its an archetype but real enough to make mistakes: Chulyen, the black raven.

A decade after the ER, contentment is found in a garden of slow tranquility as a butterfly interrupts a sunbeam.  My heart fills with bittersweet as I’ve finally found something I love and want to keep.  Just then Chulyen’s grasping black claws clamp my heart with painful arrhythmia and it fills to burst, tripping in panic trying to recover its pace.  The sudden pain drops me to my knees, in the dirt between fragrant lavender and cherry tomatoes.  Pain stops breath and time and makes me remember the ER, when my heart rebelled its ordained purpose for a week.  I had tried to throw my bitter life back in God’s face but He didn’t take it.  Now that I have peace and a life that I treasure, He’s taking it now.  The price for my mistake is due.  It was all just borrowed time and I’m still so young, my children just babies.  God with a flick of cruelty reminds me not to put faith in the tangible, especially when its treasured.  The sharp claws finally relent and I can breathe, looking up with a gasp and the Raven takes flight overhead leaving a shadow.  Bright noon warmth, unusually heavy and foreboding, seems to say ‘there will come a time when you will not welcome the sun.’   Doctors run an EKG and diagnose ‘stress’.

The bird perches on my shoulder two more decades later, always seeing death just over there.  So I sit on the porch just a little longer and check my list again, delaying the unavoidable racing heart and rush of tension when I fix the motorcycle helmet strap under my chin.  I know all those stupid drivers have my life in their cell-phone distracted hands and hope my husband knows how much I love him, and my daughters too.  

Chulyen wakes me at 3:00 am when autumn’s wind aggravates the trees.  His rustle of black feathers outside unsettles summer’s calm night.  He brings an end-of-the-world portent that hints this peace is just temporary, borrowed.  Tribulation will return.

Ravens are attracted to bright shiny things.  Chulyen steals off with treasures like intention, and contentment.  I don’t realize they are missing until occasionally I find myself truly living in the moment.  I guess that is another reason why I crave adventure, for those instants and epiphanies that snap me out of that long term modis operandi of reacting, instead of being.  The daily list of ‘I must, or I should’ can for a brief while become ‘I want’  and I am free.

My companion the black bird perches relaxed in the desert on the gatepost of a memory.  A bullet-scarred paint-faded sign dangles by one corner from rusty barbed wire:
    No Trespassing    
    That Means You
I have a haunted idea what's behind the fence.  Chulyen implies the memory with a simple mistaken sound:
a Harley in the distance is for a second the agitating echo of a helicopter...
or those were the very same words they said when...
or I hear a few jangling clinks of forks in our warm kitchen...
hinting a cold cafeteria at 5:00 am smelling of fake eggs and industrial maple flavored corn syrup,
and everything else that happened that day...
My cells recollect, brace with the addictive rush of adrenaline.  But the raven denies access to the memory, distracting with discomfort.  I trip and I fall hard into the gritty dirt of irritation at the person who unknowingly reminded me.  Anxiety floods in along with fatigue of the helplessness of it all, back then and still now.  I can't go further.  Chulyen’s tricking deception says Leave This Memory, you never wanted to come back.
But I already knew from just recognizing the bird patiently sitting there a sentinal,
recalling every other time he tricked me with nausea and depression.
I tried to tell myself again that behind that gate,
the past has dried up from neglect.
Disintegrated into dust,
Blown away,
doesn't
exist.
…


After everything else, how to work through this?  The VA gave me a manual, a crudely printed set of worksheets with a government-looking blue cover page:  Cognitive Processing Therapy.
“In normal recovery from PTSD symptioms, intrusion, thoughts, and emotions decrease over time and no longer trigger each other.  However, in those who don’t recover, the vivid images, negative thoughts, and strong emotions lead to escape and avoidance.  Avoidance prevents the processing of the trauma that is needed for recovery and works only temporarily.  The ultimate goal is acceptance.  
There may be “stuck points”, conflicting beliefs or strong negative beliefs that create additional unpleasant emotions and unhealthy behavior.  For example, a prior belief may have been “ I am able to protect myself in dangerous situations.”  But after being harmed during military service, a conflicting belief surfaces, “I was harmed during service, and I am to blame.”  If one is ‘stuck’ here, it may take some time until one is able to get feelings out about the trauma, because one is processing a number of rationales.  “I deserved it because…” , or “I misinterpreted what happened, I acted inappropriately, I must be crazy…”  The goal is to change the prior belief to one that does not hinder acceptance.  For example, “I may not be able to protect myself in all situations.”

(chapter continues with recovery methods)

Stop and start my heart again
Put my chart in its yellow bin
take my roaring pulse
feel my blood calamity up
how do you fix broken mind
because I'm flying blind

Whats the cure for frostbite of the heart?
again, I don't really want to start
I have a medical history
of a freezing heart
and in this summer
the feelings growing number

measure the beating of my heart
look at the EKG
my life in a pattern
up down up down up
...
isnt that a way to go

fix my broken bones
i tried catching up to you
i tripped over myself
and now i have to stop
untill i can see you again

There is a city that only I inhabit, and there is one in you, too
but that must mean houses are there
or a hotel one may stay during a visit. I guess it depends
on who you ask, if they believe in an everlasting love big enough
to fill the whole metropolis inside a person.
I did not know until I met you that cavities within me
could welcome a second resident and he would stay staring at
these organs without
thinking they look unnatural, like paintings x-rays EKG screens.
I am sorry for explaining this to everyone but I am just
so happy that my heartbeat  sounds like
a ticking clock to you – we hold bodies that tell their own time.

When I tell you you're beautiful,
I need you to believe me.

I need you to know
That I know what I'm talking about
When I say that I love
Every little nook and cranny
Of your entire being.

You must understand that
I love the way your
Hair parts on the side,
That small wrinkle in your forehead.

That is my wrinkle.
I am the cause of that wrinkle.

I love that sparkle in
Your plain brown eyes.
That cute little nose
Complemented by
Those luscious lips.

Lord, have mercy.

I could go on for
Forever and a day
Just to say the
Same resounding message.

Sweetheart, you're
More than beautiful.

You're heart-stopping.

day negative nine hundred and something:
Sally starts with aspirin. (She has done the math- 37 if you're lucky, 43 to be safe. And 50, just in case.) She falls asleep after 35. When she opens her eyes, it is dark and nauseous. Sally stares glumly as the glowing numbers flit on her alarm clock. 17 hours, maybe 18. ****.

day zero:
She is alone in the parking lot. She checks the time on the radio, glances at the back entrance of the BevMo building. Sally cranks the volume **** clockwise, and reaches into the backseat. Unscrews the bottle, swallows two, hesitates-- swallows two more. Her throat is tight, bone-dry. Zipping up the outer pocket of the ancient leather pack is uncharacteristically tricky. The driver's side door opens, and she smiles.

day one:
The battery light on her ****** flip-phone blinks red, in sync with the beeping of the EKG machine. She wonders if the read-out will show her disappointment. Sally's father sits motionless in the corner of the tiny room. Sleep will not come, though not for lack of trying. She glares at the ceiling. Tangled up in tubes, wires, and needles, Sally counts the ugly, white tiles. Again, she has failed.

day two:
Her parents' blue Volkswagen follows the McCormick ambulance. Sally looks awkwardly at the chiseled EMT stationed next to her. He smiles, offering comfort. It is staunchly refused. Later, the paramedics will roll her through the triple-locked doors, still strapped to the stretcher, where a room full of hollow teenagers will stare her down. They will appear as empty as she feels. Nurses will make jokes, and Sally will quickly understand that she must pretend to laugh. She will look them in the eyes and lie through teeth just out of braces, telling herself, "at least I tried."

day four:
Sally waves goodbye to the boy who tried to drink drain cleaner, carefully avoiding the the gaze of the boy who followed her into her room the night before. (She tried to tell, but no one listened.) After sloshing through mountains of concerned texts, emails, and phone messages she stops for an impromptu celebratory dinner on the way home. Sally has learned only to redefine and reinforce the *******. "I'm fine."

day seven:
The new medication has stolen her concentration. She chucks it. She can no longer sit still, begs her parents to teach her how to drive. She learns that the Volkswagen is far less austere from the inside, though the front bumper will be forever tinged with nostalgia.

day fourteen:
She attends the first court-mandated therapy session. Not that bad. The truth is hard… but deception second-nature.

day fifty-nine:
Sally no longer sleeps. Her mind is a city at night and her thoughts are technicolor billboards, all screaming the same message: 'You put me in the hospital and you never even called.'

day three hundred and forty-eight:
She practices tying nooses with a shoelace in the dark.

day three hundred and sixty-four:
She hangs herself in the bathroom in the middle of the night. Third time's a charm…
Right?

day three hundred and sixty-five:
Sally awakens on the cold floor. Again, she is surrounded by tiles.
Those white ******* tiles. Her neck bruised, a broken shoelace trails to the floor. Quietly, she resigns herself to life.
There is nothing left to ****.


s.h.

WARNING: THIS IS EXCEEDINGLY EXPLICIT...

(when for a pinpoint (the exact moment) i am nurses sift home again EKG's

it all went wrong
CT scans on the timeline
i will repeat this then i am whole again
i will defeat this hole again)


when I first
there was had in my stockings caught it something about the small red, i did not believe it. them like cardboard, and ******* now i, caught saw it, my ****** high heels, i did not believe it. them kunts like cardboard as a child i loved

and the great swan **** with a straight razor, hot water, shaving cream

dragging these white are in four directions ******* my ***   hows my ***** sheets me with a ***** and licking she said
for another my thick dark ***** juice colors my arms have too many carry the face of  emptinesses  i  **** me *** tongue on shooting that i did not look

regarding my ***  me blow jobs  with **** *** in attention. cannot help what wet ***** happens in me pink ****** fingers will happen without  smiling attention. I  ripped dripping my bra off ******* off i do not think so. i do not think so. the moon's concern is with my ***** ******* hard. **** me **** me with the particles of destruction

i **** up.  am i my **** a pulse hard and swallowing

lick my ***** loved its perfections **** is my dead self    one that **** could is not flat only be perfect  such flatness cannot make a heaven  i am not ugly.  i am even beautiful.

Sometimes there’s this emptiness in the soul
With which the saddest songs would not heal
And the soft kisses of tissues would not soothe
The burns of the acidic tears
Something in there
Cannot be resurrected
Nor stimulated  
With a thousand voltage defibrillator

Most of the time,
the rotting flesh is still alive
The heart still beats
The EKG device monitoring
Each stubborn peak and trough

Sometimes
In this blind bleakness,
There is still a small spark
An iridescent bubble that refuses to be burst
And with quiet determination,
There is a defiance to live
And sometimes
This small act of defiance
Is the greatest courage of all

Nah you were a corpse with a noose around your neck with just a blip of a heart beat on an EKG made of trees laying to rest.

She's a scared little girl and the only way she knows how to survive is off the blood and life of other people.

So I tease and tease the needle injecting, inspecting the vein liquid.

Laying up in that bed for hours with your kidneys being your friends and your head ripping your chest from your intercostals tossing your throat out your teeth through the grate lain cross your open gape

A chamber we both never wanted you lain.
Gas chambering hospital of mucus and babies puking their dead guts out.

Septic ulcer, septic shock, sepsemia.
All the bacteria love you like your their mother inlaws.
And finally you set us free from mine
That caniving, ruthless wretch watched you in the bed.
Floated above ours watching us both.
Escaped we did and finally we won't go back.
Anorexic we starve ourselves now of sharing carbon and gravitating space pits.
The blankets still make dips where we lay but they aren't the same blanket, the threads aren't long enough to cross and make up the same fabric between 100 miles so that an immediate affect between the atoms can be felt between us.

My babies still kicking though.
That's safe.

Let's play a game
grab a glass and take a seat
let's play until you or me
can not rise to our feet
think about your lover
and where she is now
that she isn't with you
and the sweat above your brow

Did you over think?
Drink

think about your life
where you thought you'd be in 10 years
20 years ago
how you're holding back tears

Did you over think?
Drink

think about yourself
the man your parents raised
have you lived up to expectations
as your EKG plays

Did you over think?
Drink

Wireshell trash can sweep-brushed
by Fusion, Alero, Chrysler Something.
They’re filled to the brim like sepia-stained
skyscrapers with swivel chairs and water cooler
pow-wows. Boss’ talking fax machines
and projections for the second fiscal quarter,
flipping a stock EKG reading on its ***. We’re
all millionaires. All up like the NYSE at seven o’clock
in our living rooms watching the fireplace
playfully threaten our investments while CNN
sends money through the VCR slot. Cars, no
garbage trucks, cars, cars, scraping hubcaps off
the high sidewalks like beautiful harpsichords.
Neighbors. Suitcases and dresser drawers
packed tight with meat tape, paper towels,
and coffee mugs/fine China make heaped trash bags
seem obsolete. There’s no garbage here.
Downtown’s neon district makes enough
that they could afford a glowsign on every window,
every square inch of every lunch special, gallery opening,
or Salvation Army bell-ringer.

Forget New York,
we're the city that never sleeps.

When I was a child, every year I had my eye exam. The doctor would always say, "Tell me when the line on the left meets the dot on the right." It never did. I always told the doctor this, and every year, he would say nothing, just go on to the next part of the exam.

In 4th grade, my best friend was Bruce Patrick. His father was training at the Menninger Foundation to become a psychiatrist. Bruce was very smart. He sat across from me. Ms Perrin, our teacher, would devote part of every school day to reading. Each student had a copy of the same book. Ms Perrin would say, "Start reading." As we all began reading, I immediately saw that Bruce was ready to turn to the second page while I was only half way down the first. This puzzled me as the two of us were pretty much equal in every other subject.

Because I was pretty much a straight-A student during those years, my Dad had me apply to Andover, often considered, as I was to find out, the best prep school in the USA. I had never heard of it. I went to Kansas City to take the entrance test. When the results came back, I had done well except on the reading section. Out of 15 reading sections, I was able finish only 3 or 4 of them. I was rejected by Andover, so dad had me attend Andover summer school. No ordinary summer school was it. It was eight weeks long and we had class on Saturday mornings. Two of the classes I took were English classes--a lot of reading. It took me twice as long, or longer, to read each
novel than it took my classmates. But I got good grades notwithstanding.

Dad had me apply again to Andover the following year. Same thing happened I now know for the same reason. I was rejected. So Dad sent me again to Andover summer school. Same thing happened there, too, including both my need to spend twice as long reading a book, but getting good grades nevertheless. When my Dad came to pick me up at the end of summer school. we both went to the office of Dean of Admissions. I don't know why, but we did. The first thing the Dean--I can't remember his name--said to me, the very first thing--was, "You're in! We have accepted you for the fall of 1960. You don't even have to apply."

In those days, if you graduated from Andover, you just decided which college you wanted to attend, and come Fall, you just walked through their gates. It was that simple, because Andover had such clout. I chose Columbia over Yale and thoroughly enjoyed my four years there, but I still had to study more than twice as much as my classmates.

One evening back in Topeka where I had grown up, I sat in a booth at Pore Richards sipping coffee with my friend, Michelle, who was a psychologist at Menninger's. I was 27 then. She was telling me about a workshop she had attended the previous week-end in Tulsa. I found the things she had learned most interesting. The more she shared with me, the more I began to feel that she was talking about me. Finally, I interrupted her. I said, "Michelle, what you are describing, what you are telling me about, sounds like what I have dealt with my whole life." I elaborated. She said she thought I had been suffering from monocular vision, the eye doctor's specialty. Michelle said I should drive down to Tulsa to see him. I did.

The doctor put me through a three-hour series of exams, the final one being when he hooked up both eyes separately to tracking machines that recorded on tape the movements of each eye, then asked me to read a paragraph. When I had finished, the doctor got the long, narrow tapes that had recorded both eyes separately and showed me both. The first tape showed the movement of my right eye. I was fascinated. The tape I looked at reminded me of an EKG. For about an inch-and-a half, the line on the tape showed my right eye reading, but then flat-lined (as when your heart stops beating when you die). Then the doctor showed me the tape for the left eye. Then line indicated my left eye kept reading, but not like a normal eye. The doctor said my left eye was moving "in a jagged manner," which meant it was not functioning properly. I shall never forget what the doctor said to me at that moment:  "Tod, I'm surprised you can even read a book, let alone get through college."

As I drove back to Topeka, I thought about the eye doctor whom I had seen every year through grade school "Tell me when the line on the left meets the dot on the right." And that doctor never responded for years when I told him every year they never met. That condition is a classic symptom of monocular vision.

That *******, I thought, as I made my way home.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

~for Vinnie Brown~


even your kindergarten crushes?

what burdens you seek to retain,
the edgy border of delicious and pain
is a raggedy cut line,
as lost lovings, rhymes with duality

Once upon a time,
a middle aged man
left the woman he married,
the one who drained and cruel reigned
over the destruction of his-dreams,
for one accidentally stumbled into,
the love who blurred his edges as well,
between forgotten happiness and
pain so awesome bad when she grew tired
of his life's complications,
she left him,
weeping on the corner of Broadway and 83rd Street

was that 20, 30 years ago?
a memory
from no matters land
but
the physical ache that marred the hearth in the chest for
months and months,
sent him to the doc who smiled sweetly
but gave him, had no, no relief for
busted grownup hearts
with normal EKG's

that remains a treasured affirmation to this day of
life's capacity to love that comes with
an ingrown danger
of never forgetting

did you know the French outlawed the use of the term
Mademoiselle in '12 (Mlle.)?

I loved that salutation,
calling my one true lovers
with the soft feminism of that address

and still do

and you want to recall
kindergarten crushes?

Mister Vinnie
possesses a lovely contradiction,
holding onto
lost lover sickness
that lives on in good love poems

this my new found poet,
is how that he, this aching heart,
fast approaching his shore line for one last return
and final departure
repays a sweet compliment,
from one who complements
anothe man's lovely's insane desire to
never forget any of it

~~~

reading Vinne Brown's poetry
https://hellopoetry.com/vinnie-brown/

and listening to Joni M.
at 3:09AM;
never wise,
but full of hindsight

By: Cedric McClester

Daddy was an absentee
Momma was on crack
Although I love the both of them
They didn’t love me back
I grew up the hard way
Ya see that’s just a fact
So maybe that explains
Why I act the way I act
They say if you don’t learn from it
History just repeats
So I spent my adolescent years
Runnin’ in the streets
I was selling dope
Where the junkies came to meet
And I’ve seen homies gunned down
In front of my feet

Ya had to watch yo’ back
Even as a little kid
Depending on of course
The people you hung with
I was with a fast crowd
Guess it was obvious
They only worshiped money
And no one did they trust
I learned to be like ‘em too
And do the things I saw them do
Like being loyal to a crew
While hoping no one got to you
Especially someone that you knew
Oh you’d be paranoid too
If you went through
What I’ve been through

Why I act the way I act?
Is that a question or attack?
Why did I give up selling smack?
How come I turned to selling crack?
Here’s a word to the wise
Don’t take the time to analyze
I have my reasons and besides
I’m not the kind who confides

Maybe it was preordained
From the very start
Who knew that I’d turn
Drug dealing into an art
Or have an ozone layer size
Hole inside my heart
That can make it very difficult
For an EKG to chart
I had to make a living
So I don’t apologize
For certain aspects of my life
That you may well despise
What gives you the right
To judge me or criticize
Or determine where I go
Straight to hell or if I rise

Why I act the way I act?
Is that a question or attack?
Why did I give up selling smack?
How come I turned to hustling crack?
Here’s a word to the wise
Don’t take the time to analyze
I have my reasons and besides
I’m not the kind who confides

I’m a victim of circumstance
A brother from the hood
Who decided to take a chance
Because I thought I should
Do whatever I had to do
Almost anybody would
Come up with an escape plan
For their greater good
You don’t have to agree with me
Or the methods that I chose
You don’t have my history
As everybody knows
See you didn’t have to struggle
From the depths from which I rose
And you don’t have to constantly
Make sure you’re on your toes

Why I act the way I act?
Is that a question or attack?
Why did I give up selling smack?
How come I turned to hustling crack?
Here’s a word to the wise
Don’t take the time to analyze
I have my reasons and besides
I’m not the kind who confides

I’ve got lots of cash machines
To count the wages of my sins
I’m a man of means by all means
And I have lots of ends
I drive all around this town
In a chauffeured Mercedes Benz
Though you can view me if you like
Through a magnifying lens
And I’ve beat more court cases
Than Jackie Robinson
Has stolen bases
I’ve made mistakes but keep your places
That’s why pencils have erasers
And some folks take their drinks
With chasers

Why I act the way I act?
Is that a question or attack?
Why did I give up selling smack?
How come I turned to hustling crack?
Here’s a word to the wise
Don’t take the time to analyze
I have my reasons and besides
I’m not the kind who confides

(c) Copyright 2015, Cedric McClester.  All rights reserved

You were like a breath of fresh air in a room full of poison.
You saved me, gave me mouth to mouth.
Checked the EKG to be sure that everything was fine.
I guess you should have gotten an x-ray.
Maybe then you could have foreseen the internal bleeding.
Maybe then you could have saved my soul.

She drew a breath and let it go as she crept closer to the edge. She shivered as her toes, painted pink, hugged the ledge.  She brushed a trespassing orange hair from her brow and and stretched her arms to the sky.  Took one final breath as she closed her eyes.  She leapt.  Pushed her heels into the ground. Then the pads of her toes.  The tips of her toes.  She extended her arms and flew.  And as the world whizzed past in vibrant blacks and grays, the ground below her exploded into detail.  It was amazing.  Beautiful.  The memories of her past were far from her mind, everything terrible shut behind the blinds.  The ground rose up to meet her and caressed her cheek.  She regained her senses for only a moment and her green eyes flashed a smile.  She opened her hands and pressed her fingers to the cool concrete and as a chill ran through her veins.  The corners of her perfectly red lips pulled into a gentle smile, and she was happy.  Her eyelids fluttered and then laid motionless above her freckled cheeks.  She faded as she melted into the ground.----- Her nose twitched and wrinkled to the singe of winter’s chill and the smell of hospital food.  She awoke, eyes closed, to the rhythmic chirp of an EKG machine.  She ran her hand up her arm and felt the IV and needles.  She slowly came out of unconsciousness and felt pain and then her mothers fingers entwined between hers.  She knew it was her.  She knew the shape of her hands well.  Every curve and wrinkle, the indent from where her mother’s wedding ring once sat for so long, but not anymore.  She felt the hands that had held her for sixteen years.  Her eyes slowly flicked open and she found the flustered but relieved visage of her mother. The girl shut her eyes, quick.  Hoping they would never open again.

The hypnotic affecting extremism at its apogee paused to smoke a
cigarette while the fulcrum groaned as the smoke gave warning that
the night  ended and the long day ahead was about to begin; as it
began hurtling downward, flicking the still glowing **** aside, like
so many grim-faced hotel rooms, oddly black and white in a world
that can only imagine rainbows, it’s message gaining momentum
while opposing forces, raging at the loss of its friction on the public
consciousness, braced itself as its stomach churned because the
bottom had fallen out of its idealistic pilgrimage; the survival of
good conversation, a flowing flute, bottled wine with old corks
never seemed to concern itself with the lack of compromise; it
was only the death of pay phones and taxis, like a miscarriage,
creating momentary pause, that remembered what it was like to
once matter only to be abandoned because life is only about how
arrogance, no matter its source, vicarious or self-induced, a tooth-
pick in its mouth, unimpressed because cynicism held tightly to
the rope, swinging it, not out of convenience, but because it
enjoys toying with outrage, unsentimental, bored with itself and
in need of a ticket for the show; while a poet looked on, consumed
with right and wrong; whether to be a pacifist or a realist, to be
patriotic or humanistic no matter nationality, to be the writer
or the book, to accept that evil must be vanquished or to merely
lament the human condition; he knew the love of beautiful words
meant nothing to a world on fire; to a hit man trying to finish
what he first shot was unable; to a poor man sleeping under the
thin blanket of speeches and promises; to a child, terrified by
blinding light and deafening explosions; only the mindless
idealist could love these words, yet was it truth or was it only
a selfishly clever principle that pointed in one direction no
matter yesterday’s accusations that became todays justification;
would it be that he cast aside contemplation for his own gun;
to become the killer or the hand that turns off the sound of the
montone ekg, so that the world might not be aware of the
necessary evil of killing evil; but what would truth say as the
pendulum races past prudence, towards an equilibrium not
in balance with virtue but instead with revenge and opportunism;
what should he say about that; who would listen to his blood
stained pen, witness of his own atrocities, killing his own
voice, once full of peaceful assurance about the good within
the hearts of men; who would listen to the shrugging shoulders
of a rebuilt poem, to be told to children and those who wish
to think of the things that powerful men destroy as history
has always insisted must be so; who would listen to the naïve
man who had a way of arranging emotions at will; who would
listen as another hypnotically extreme apogee lit another cold
hearted cigarette, without a filter, because what would be the
point of that; there was none; decency could not survive hell
and its lungs could not survive the slow death anyway;  it
became a matter of feeling the fire from the inside, so that the
words meant something to somebody because they would
know that a life of pain was the only way to reach the point
of meaning; a sort of constant face full of inspiration as he
took his seat next to the fulcrum that remained alone, unable
to speak because nobody cared to listen or reason anymore;
it didn’t seem to matter; only that beautiful words had to live
live for itself and for those who wanted to feel that way for
a moment; but he knew, that lies and compromises lived
silently, because flowers do not grow in desert sand and a
poet who closes his eyes is like a baby with a rattle in its hand

i'd like to know how staying in a hospital
is described as a "comedy drama".
my "red-band society"
was nothing like the show depicts
these kids
these kids are happy
they're joyous while they're flirting and making out in a closet
for ****'s sake, that's not even high school
the nurses aren't your friends
they aren't there to hold your hand while you die
they have jobs to do and lives to save
my red-band society was me and my moms
but i was the only one who participated in the activities
i laid in bed with stickers and clips taped across my body
and the sleeve on my arm constricted
every fifteen minutes
i didn't hear laughter in the halls
i heard heart monitors erratically beeping
and hurried footsteps whenever someone was dying
i wasn't laughing over cancer and anorexia
i was laying awake at four in the morning getting my blood pressure checked every hour
the red-band society
is a constant EKG with a prolonged QT
that may lead to arrhythmia
you don't get to go to homecoming
you don't get to run or race in the hallways
hospitals shouldn't be romanticized
cancer isn't fun
anorexia isn't a phase
there is nothing happy about being checked in
about being sick
i was miserable
and this show is glorifying disease
kids are going to want to be hospitalized
there's no knowing what they'll do
to achieve what the program advertises
i'd like to know if the maker of the show
is in their right mind.
granted, people's experiences differ
but kids shouldn't be promised damaged friends
if they stop eating
if they run away from home
a hospital isn't a ******* playground
or a child's domain
the fact that they are showing doctors being this irresponsible is nauseating
nothing revolves around you
there are other people who need help too
and children will harm themselves
with the expectation of of video games and relaxation.

You will always follow me
Like melting canyon walls
Grown of glass
Forever folding inward
At my back.
In my mind;
Even when the rain clears up
You still stir
Your whitened waters.

One day,
When you left me
Mid-November,
heat still settles in only the South
The sun stole every sip
Slurped up every drop
From every pore
In my thinned body.
You almost killed me
I suppose-
Even then-
You tried to save me
Saving you
Hives across my body:
Holding aquifer pockets
Of your own blood.
You tried to warn me
With swollen, itchy
Reddened feet
My fingers burned,
But I went to sleep.

Awakened with delusion
You kicked at the curve
Of my knee
I; collapsed
Unconscious
With only pain running through my bedrock veins.
You left me,
With white running down my face.
You showed me how much mama loves me
Barely breathing
Bent over my body
With her own salty piece of you falling in my face.

Neaseous,
I could no longer hold you
No matter how much I longed to.
Mama took me to you.
Again, like glass on a November morning you sent ice through blue blood and back to my heart.
Like mama,
You screamed
Until you brought me conscious.

Twice mama had taken me to you
And on the first I'd fallen in love.
Hooked to an EKG
My eyes rolled back to when we met
As they pulled tubes of my blood from body
Weakened, I held only a blurred memory
Of three years ago
When you carried me over your muddied body,
Still with softened white ripples,
And warmed- no matter how far upstream- by July.
It was there
Touching the silk of your skin
With sun on my chest
And life at my back
That I promised
One day,
I would save you too.

The elderly skin on my heart
Is thin but will no longer stretch tight again
Like a baby girls innocent cheeks grin
My senior citizen love comes at no discount

It's free to anyone who wishes to
Count the wrinkles on my arms and legs
The scars of time
Face it
Age is not a number it's a place

The youth of my youngness short lived
Took a toll on my skeleton
Bare ***** attitude toward commitment
I give it away as skin cells turned to dust
Never would've guessed it would be
In my chest

I still have a certain amount of elegance
There's a smaller fire in my heart sight
Kept my cardiac eyes as peeled as I could

The fight fought genuinely
But never without naïveté
How can it be this shocking?
The overall life EKG

Oh I know I'm only twenty something
Don't think I'm trying to act mature
You've made it clear I'm another heart sore
But your words bounce around my skull and
In my chest

Age is ageless memories
Numbers are mathematics
My heart attack tactics
Have grown my heart love decrepit old
So if you hold my hearts hand
Stand for something
Please

If I hold your hand and
You flow through my heart
Understand I'm more than willing to
Start again from day one again

Just forgive the crevices in my sternum permeating my heart skin

You don't think I see it.
And, honestly,
I didn't recognize it at first.

I've never been on the receiving end of that look.

But, as they hook me up
With wires and sensors
For an EKG,
I can see it.

The way you look at me.

That fire in your eyes,
Always so resilient,
So passionate.
Like you could do anything
As long as you really wanted it.

But it looked like that fire,
Just now,
Was eating you alive.
The flames licking at the fragments
Of your heart.

It looked like pain.
Like loss.
Like the world is falling down all around you,
And there is nothing you can do to stop it.

I recognize that look, now.
I've seen it in my own reflection,
Staring back at me,
Venomous tears threatening to burn through my skin
If I were to let them fall.
A sandy lump in my throat,
When I finally understood.

You can love someone with every part of you,
With your whole heart.
You can love someone
Through lifetimes.
Through centuries.
You can love someone to the very end of the universe,
And back again.

But you cannot love someone's broken pieces back together.

But,
Sometimes,
When all I feel is searing pain,
I think of the pain in your eyes,
The very depth of it,
The intensity,
When you even entertain the thought of losing me.

And it suddenly occurs to me,
That you love me.
And as long as you love me,
As long as you're mine,
I'm not done here. No, not yet.

So I stand up.
I brush myself off,
And look directly into the void,
And wait for it to blink first.

I growl through gritted teeth,
****** from a split lip,
While clutching the lace hem
Of my pink sundress.
*"I am not done here. No, not yet."

Split the sun
with an ax like velvet.
The braincase open,
the soul drips-
like egg yolk
onto the sandflats
the old blood ants march out
and pile up
into a monolith
sharp enough to scratch the azure off the sky
tall enough to disrupt the horizon
like a blip on your ancient EKG
that peaks like a drop in a pool
then crashes like a kettle drum.

No birds.
Empurpled sand towers darken silently
junipers twitch imperceptably
rattlesnake retreats beneath the dust.
A billion years of breath and tears
grinding the sediment down
a dramatic pull toward the distant sea.

Make sediment of me.

Now that I've pulled out the needles,
or that I've quit tracing the EKG,
I don't know where to dip my pen in.

i am the beat
the crescent shape
of a bent
smile
before a row of
coffee stained teeth.
i am the heart
that seeps
into bathtubs
filled with
blue water
before the blood
turns red
as it bleeds.

i am a pair
of wobbly knees
bent beneath
the thorax
of a
pious human being.
i am the voice
that screams
into the
fractaled crags
of a
barren
canopy
made of
the tops of dying
trees.

i am the
thinning heat;
the quickened
silver drops
of mercury clung
to the
mercurial
summer solstice
breeze.

i am that
i am these
and those
over there
the filthy and
the clean.
i am the
saddened longing
for what
hides
between
the
knees -
the skirts
the kilts
i am birds
i am bees.

i am
the Christ
born again at
11:11 am
gestations in the
akashic amniotic
fluid of
celestial
Krishna Kosmic
seas.
i am the dragon
belching
fires
as he breathes -
the
coiled serpent
sleeping
at the
base
of the
Knowledge Tree.

i am safe
because
i am He
and She
i am
the babe
at the *****
of the
Holy Mother,
i am
the Crone
on a
long
incarnation’s
Eve.

i am the
wounded
and the
weak;
the boastful,
macho - man *******
and the
humility
of the meek.
i am the
paycheck
at the end of a long
two weeks
and the long
walkabouts
of lotus- trodden
feet.
i am the
sinew
in
the
meat,
the tea
while it steeps,
the
pressure of the deeps;
i am the
EKG-
magnetic
snake skins
and
electric beeps.
i am the
one
who
perceives -
my self
upheld
in the arms of
Isis
swaddled in
Her
sleeves.

i am the lute
i am She
Who plucks my strings
Who listens
Who watches
while
i
dance
while
i
sing.

I don't know what to type
I don't know what to say
Do you have days like these?
Where the Depression is so crippling,
It slithers through your mind and snatches up your words,
It leaves your mouth open with a deafening scream of silence.
It molds your grey matter into an exploding question mark,
It pulls the plug.
All you hear is the incessant whine of the EKG machine; your mind has
flat lined.

That's how I feel every day of my life.
It manifests into a physical pain, right in the frontal lobe.
Is it real or am I ******(somatic.)
I want to shove a knife through my forehead to break this curse,
The physical and emotional pain would stop then.
The knife would be inscribed, on it written:
Nothing.

Can dying be like turning off the radio?   tuning in for channels  from left to right ,extracting something sullen from a switch or a dial
blurbs of breaths interrupted like commercials getting their paid minutes of madness included in your daily drain
Staying in static staving off the mostly erratic ,we listen & hear but never draw near brushing it away as  trifle
Many many options, but who is making the rules of when it should stop  or what will be the proper words to explain


many never consider moving the numbers ,call signs always waiting to catch us in our prime times
Breathing outward to us, capturing capsules of our minds ,received but not welcomed another number another day
Between the hissing maybe vocal, for many never thought of more than local , moving on ,humming, simply trying to make rhymes
Making an action  from voices echoing from autos,hallways, has become so integrated that thought never develops it is  just Passe


The power from those towers can be far reaching flailing out three hundred sixty degree waves of blind finesse
Like sirens from a sonnet we take in the vibrations filling us flawlessly ,often over riding all previous notions
Now a newer unknown way of reception with nerves and neurons regulating the actions of a soul that will regress
Upbeat harmonies similar to patterns of a heart beat,  sent out through receivers ,be it stereo or EKG & EEG
Brought in felt is rising ,falls, patterns of charts or felt as soft art, quick decisions now bring new emotions

Transfixed on some beacons belching out mindless material between static ,shaky even erratic or even magic
Simple samples of voices taking notes as we turn the dial ,Passover or stay put depending on the vibe
Once released how far can the true transmissions travel,ever really lost or just passing into the abyss without ever being tragic
So A.M. or F.M. begun with tuning in ,just blending ,taken as common background expressions , becoming to accustomed with pleasantries
or patterns until the sudden LOUD rush of blind blaring induces a reaction to maybe an ending to the program that we have long been subscribed .....R.C.

White-knuckle ransom note,
to the one.

There is a picket fence
outside a great and quaint Victorian ranch.
There, the weeds will never grow,
and he shall go off the defense.

Doctor, we don't need an EKG.
I can see everything from his veins to his capillaries.
Everything pulses to the beat.
I only see want and need.

For all the sleepless nights
Underneath a ceiling
Of plaster stars
For every lonely day
With with only nurses
To keep you company
For every IV
For every EKG
For every single test
And teary eyed sentence
For every scar
For every pill
For every bullet
And every gun
There is someone
In an identical hospital bed
There is someone
Who aches the same

For every heart that breaks
There's another one healing
You are not alone
We are not alone

Sleep Study

Do I have to buy the book? The SparkNotes?
Will this material be testable?
But all I have to do is go to sleep
In a lovely bed in a lovely room

To sleep, adorned with little EKG pads
And little wires a-running here and there
Like the wiring harness of a Packard
In need of a tuneup since ‘48

I cast aside a novel about spies
And in a bit begin to study sleep

          Number Six: "How did I sleep?"

          Number Two: "Sound as a bell. Have a nice day."

                                       -*The Prisoner

Our everyday blends together
becoming a mess
gathering dust.

Everything’s the same,
nothing ever changes,
nothing happens.

I’ve figured it out,
what life needs,
My Answer.

Life needs ups and downs,
can’t just let it plateau,
That’s what you learn from the EKG monitor

Can’t stop feeling like I’m not going,
Start moving, but everything’s slowing.

Can’t start stopping, now that I’ve begun,
Don’t stop, cause when you do, you’re done.

Everyone else shines, I’m barely glowing,
How far I’ll get, there’s no way of knowing.

It’s like an EKG, hope it doesn’t stop,
Go as fast as you can, go until you drop.

Unfeeling as you stumble through a fog,
What’s history matter, it’s just a prologue.

When I walked in the room
you were gone half an hour:
dust-motes hanging in hospital sunshafts,
the words I'd prepared tumbling in air.

IV, EKG, blood pressure cuffs
hung slack on a steel mast in the corner.  
On your white berth, you were a frigate,
unmoored from her pier.

Your hand curled in the sheet. I charted
the scape of your body: gnarled knees, wave
of hammer toes, and the pale scars
of skin grafts, oyster smooth.

The nurse had closed your eyes.
Your chin pulled the word of your mouth
to your clavicle; this was the sound
of a cave,  or your breath on rock.

You lingered in the white and silver
room the way fathers do, hesitating to
leave their children before a long journey:
the warmth of your sternum under my rocky cheek bone.

In the 4 o'clock luster of
Indian River sun
my face is black as  bog-turf,
sloppy with life.