after Ohran Pamuk

Everything just rushes by  me now.
There are no longer the ritual pauses:
when I held a cigarette between *******,
I could hold Time itself.

I could pluck two stills
from the hurried film of my day –
one of what had just happened,
and the other of what might come next –

and I could stand, quietly alone
between those two frames,
holding time still in my hand,
and just look, and think, and smoke.

She hates the children because they are not her own.
Her smile forced, her hands crooked with some secret defeat,
and the children pay for it.
From the back of the classroom, she looks beautiful,
but it is an illusion.
She has a mane of red hair framing her face like a lion’s mane.
But that is the most remarkable thing about her.
She is gaunt. She is very tall. She is unmistakable.

She is awkward when she relaxes. She fidgets and trembles.

In the playground, she has Yard Duty.
She resents the students in grades 2, 3, 4, …
because they have outgrown her, they no longer need her.
She must be in her thirties, you can tell by her hands.
And there is no ring there.
That might be the thing. There is no ring.

Her bed sheets are white.
She curls her long body up into a ball at night.
She works hard. She can’t help herself.
Yet she knows there is no reason to admire people
for working hard if they can’t do otherwise.

She’s absent from school today.
She is never absent.
The words that blow through the air in the playground
and hallways are: She is getting married today.
She decided to get married today.

She already hates her husband, though she hardly knows him.
She hates him because a person, a man,
needs to be attached to the ring that she wears
and the baby she will have. And why should there be?

He calls her name from the other side of the bed.
She curls herself up into a ball.
Perhaps she will hate her baby, too.
She might not be able to help it.
But can you blame someone for feeling
something she can’t help but feel?

Then his wife said to him, “Do you still persist in your integrity?
Curse God, and die.”
— Job 2:9

Job was a rich man
who, in a trial of divine justice,
was dismantled of all he owned
by a fire that fell from heaven.
Sick and God-blinded, he repented.

But who speaks of his wife’s suffering?
Perhaps she was a woman who took great joy
in things and possessions and luxuries.
Perhaps she sat on heaps of soot,
itemizing the absolute sum of her loss,
calling out to God in argument, crying:

“In whom can I have faith
when the Giver takes that which is given?
And when the love of that
which is loved, and given, and taken,
is instilled in me by the Lover,
the Giver, the Taker?

“Now, I live for nothing.
I long for death, but it does not come.
And yet You have ensured
I survived to tell You this.”

The grim reaper is collecting,
Cigarette butts on your doorstep.
I bet you're wishing you could adjust the angle,
That you see your insides from.

I see all the frills,
That you can't live without.
I see all the signs of your demise,
In your little checkbook.

She thinks she's a killer.
Do the stigmas hit you hard,
When you smoke with her, baby?
She's bleeding alcohol when you crush her.

I am even lesser.
I dare you.
Step down to my level,
So that we're both trying ourselves.

How ungrateful of me,
To see another truth,
And hide it out of sight.
Unfaithful to myself.

Always gasping in my sleep,
"You, it's you."
I'm living on the other side,
While your riches die.

But this moment is golden.

10th July 2017

To My Husband

As I watch your life, slipping away
We share all the things we want to say

We have time to reflect, encourage and love
To be grateful with warmth, to look beyond and above

We remember the good and laugh at the bad
And take time to listen and embrace the sad

It is a rich time, this time that we have
What has been, what is now, is what will be had

As your strength fades, and your eyes slowly dim
We look beyond the body you are in

When death approaches and your final breath taken
We know your spirit, will soar with elation

You will look at this world and say your goodbyes
And peace will take you as you pass through the sky’s

All the best for your journey
Your loving wife

Whether it was learning long division,
Or naming all fifty states.
Nothing seemed to matter.
It all seemed so trivial.

The phantom that haunted me
Never left,
Not even in elementary.
I could not cope, nor concentrate.

Cafeteria feasts
Made of concentrate.
Paired with my inner confusion,
I tended to lose my lunch.

I tried to hold
Myself to a means
Of normalcy.
It wound up as ***** on my shoes.